January 11, 2021 Show with Paul Murphy on “Reformed Evangelism & Urban Missions”

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 11th day of January 2021, and I am absolutely thrilled to have back on the program a friend of mine that has not been on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for quite some time.

He's an old friend of mine going back to the 1990s. He was a client of mine when

I was an account executive at WMCA Radio and WWDJ Radio, which are affiliates of Salem Media, the largest

Christian radio network in the world, and I worked there for 15 years, and our guest today was one of my clients.

His name is Paul Murphy, and he is the pastor of Messiah's Reform Fellowship in New York, and today we are going to be addressing

Reformed Evangelism and Urban Missions, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back after a long absence,

Paul Murphy. Well, good afternoon. Good to be with you, Chris, and yes,

I remember those days at WMCA when we were first getting started as a church plant, and you were very helpful, and being on the radio was quite instrumental in getting us off the ground.

And, of course, to all that are listening, good afternoon to you, and welcome to the program. Great. Well, why don't you tell our listeners something about Messiah's Reform Fellowship?

Sure. We are a United Reformed Church congregation.

United Reformed Churches is a federation about 25 years old, largely comprised of congregations coming out of the

Christian Reformed Church, which began in the late 80s or early 90s.

And we were planted as a direct response to the tragic events of September 11th.

We began just 850 yards from Ground Zero on Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan.

Ground Zero is at the western end of Fulton Street. We were located at the eastern end of Fulton Street, and Christians at the time thought that that would be the best thing that we could do in response to those tragic events with the hope and prayer that God would turn that tragedy into a triumph for the gospel.

And we were located down there for a little over 10 years, and then our landlord sold the building, and we were forced to move locations.

We moved up to Midtown, and we were located in Hell's Kitchen for the last eight years. And, of course, that's a good place to plant a church.

However, we just recently moved again, and we are now located for the last month or so in Gramercy Park.

We began with just one other person besides myself. Even my family was in Michigan, where I had pastored previously, and I wouldn't recommend anybody start a church with just one person, but we did, and God has blessed that.

We are now well over 100 people on Sunday morning, at least pre -COVID, and we had a

And in addition to that, we have planted a church ourselves out in Jersey City, New Jersey, Grace Reform Church.

So we are very thankful to the Lord for the blessing He has bestowed on us over the course of those 17 years, and just continue to serve

Him faithfully in the midst of New York City, which is a desperately dark place in great need of the gospel.

Amen. One of the, if not the most, liberal and religiously and ideologically diverse mission fields on the planet

Earth. Yes. Yeah, definitely. Although, I'll have to say,

I'm a Christian some 30 -odd years, and when I was converted, things were actually much worse in New York.

So it's gotten better, but there's still great need in the city.

And with COVID, of course, there's even a greater need because people have been, yeah, shocked into being afraid of everything.

So to be able to go to them and help them overcome their fears is a blessing as well.

Well, since you are in Gramercy Park now, I was wondering if you know my old friend,

Reverend Jacob Smith, who is the rector at the parish of Calvary St.

George's Episcopal Church, which is actually a theologically Reformed, confessional, low church,

Episcopalian church there in Gramercy Park. Actually, I do not, but it's interesting that you mention that because we are meeting in Calvary Church.

Oh! Well, you've got to meet Reverend Jacob. He's a great guy. Jacob Smith, right?

Yes. I've known him for many years, and he's been a guest on this program. And I discovered that church, actually, years ago when

Calvary Press Publishing, which was first launched by my former pastor,

Mike Gaydosh, who now operates Solid Ground Christian Books, they brought back into print an excellent book by Stephen Ting, who was the pastor of St.

George's in the 1800s, and he was a thoroughgoing Calvinist and strong 39 articles confessional

Episcopalian. And I loved this book so much that I wanted to find out more about that church and where it was theologically and ideologically, and that's how

I met Jacob. And thankfully, the Lord used him, and I think those that were even prior to him, to bring that church back to its

Reformed, confessional, conservative Bible -believing roots. And it's amazing that they can still survive in that denomination in the 21st century.

Are they part of the Church of England? Well, they are part of the

Episcopal Church USA, which is, as you know, an extremely liberal denomination, and they have been able to survive without compromising their beliefs, which is really amazing to me.

Yeah, that's great. We're there about a month now, maybe six weeks, and Calvary, it's one parish, two churches, as you know, and Calvary, during COVID, decided that they would meet with St.

George's, which left the Calvary Church building vacant, and we came along at just the right time in God's providence, where they needed a tenant, so we're there.

When COVID's over, they're going to move back to two congregations, but right now, they're just meeting as one over at St.

George's. Well, you've got to take a tour of St. George's sometime, because very different architecture than Calvary, because Stephen Ting, who founded

St. George's, was involved in the architecture, and it is purposely a very non—what's the word

I'm looking for? As far from Romish as you could get, no statues, a simple

Lord's table with no ornate carvings or paintings, very typical of what was at the time low church

Episcopalianism slash Anglicanism of the 19th century and prior, and Jacob was giving me quite the fascinating tour of that church building.

In fact, there was an assassination attempt on some very well -known figure in the early 1900s, one of the great billionaires of Manhattan who was a member there.

There was an assassination attempt on him, and the bullet hole was still there, and unfortunately, somebody else was accidentally killed, and for that reason, the hospital was built across the street by this billionaire, and I can find out the exact name of that individual when

I'm able to confirm who it was, but he was so grieved over the fact that somebody else was murdered because there was an attempt on his life that he had the hospital built right across the street because the person died because it took so long to get the person to the hospital.

Fascinating. I have been in that building. My children graduated from King's College, and they hold their commencement services there each year, but I've never been there for a worship service.

I'll have to get in touch with Jacob Smith. Thank you for telling me that very interesting providence that we mentioned,

Matt. Yeah, I didn't even know that's where you were worshiping before the show. Yeah, yeah.

Well, if anybody wants more information about Messiah's Reformed Fellowship in Manhattan, you can go to M -E -R -F -N -Y -C -dot -org.

That's M -E -R -F -N -Y -C -dot -org, and M -E -R -F is an abbreviation of Messiah's Reformed Fellowship, and hopefully we'll remember to repeat that later on in the program.

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen, at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N, gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter.

Let's say you have adopted a theological position that you didn't formally hold to, and you don't share the theological position of your own church, perhaps.

Perhaps you are at odds with your own pastor, or he doesn't know yet that you're at odds with him theologically.

Perhaps you're a pastor, and you have grown to adopt a position on doctrine and theology and practice that is different from your own fellow elders or your denomination.

Whatever the case is, reasons like that would be obvious reasons to remain anonymous.

Or if you have a pastoral question of Pastor Murphy that would compel you to remain anonymous, we would understand that, and we would grant your request.

But if it's just a general question on theology, on practice, please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and country of residence.

And so, let's start with the first half of the theme of our program today, which is

Reformed Evangelism and Urban Missions. Reformed evangelism. Now, why would that necessitate a different title?

Or at least, it wouldn't necessitate it, but it's helpful to understand, perhaps, with a specific title like a

Reformed evangelism, as opposed to a broadly Christian or broadly evangelical evangelism.

Sure. Well, I think there are some significant differences when approaching it from a

Reformed perspective. And just generally, I think, you have a message -centered approach as opposed to a method -centered approach, which predominates in contemporary

North American evangelicalism. If you look around, whether it's crusades or whether it's various ministries or whether it's revival meetings, they are predominantly driven by a method -centered approach to evangelism.

And the other thing, the other difference that a Reformed perspective makes is it is

God -centered rather than man -centered. And again, the predominant means or evangelism that you see in contemporary

North American evangelicalism is man -centered. So, I think that these, one, being message -centered and God -centered is more faithful to what we find in the

Bible and the ministry of Jesus Christ and the Apostles, which should be prominent and important.

But I also think that it provides a helpful collective, both to the practice of evangelism and the consequences of evangelism as well.

Now, when you say that Reformed evangelism makes every effort, if it's actually living up accurately to its label to a

God -centered evangelism, a God -centered worship, there are very few people that would be failing miserably on that issue that would actually admit that they were not

God -centered. Obviously, we would think, being Reformed ourselves, that the majority of Christendom in the 21st century is failing miserably in being

God -centered in worship, in practice, in evangelism. But nobody is typically going to say, well, we have designed our church to be more man -centered than God -centered.

So, how would you say a church accurately could be described in both of those ways, one being the biblically faithful way, being

God -centered, and one being man -centered? Sure. I think that, you know, I don't want to deprecate or easily dismiss brothers and sisters in Christ who sincerely want to reach men and women, boys and girls, with the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

They desire, I'm sure, and I know because I've worked with them, desire with all their heart to see people come to know

Jesus Christ as the Savior from sin. But, of course, you can be sincerely wrong as well.

And I think that it is, while it's necessary to be sincere, it's insufficient to be sincere when it comes to this task.

I think that it's not hard to demonstrate the difference in that, and I think when you point it out to people, they can see that.

The other thing I would say, and I'll elaborate on these differences in a moment if you'd like, but the other thing

I've found in working with people from various backgrounds is that they are often, and I say this with all sincerity and charity, they're often much better at their theology when it comes to practice.

I'll give you an illustration of that. When I was in seminary, we used to, I led up a group of students called seminarians on the street, and we would go out every

Friday afternoon and we would do various things, mostly evangelism, street preaching, passing out tracks, knocking on doors, things like that.

And we would often go out with open -air campaigners. I don't know if you're familiar with them,

Chris? Yes, I am. Anyway, the people that we would go out with from that organization were pretty self -consciously

Arminian in their theology. But when we would drive down from Westminster's campus to Center City, Philadelphia to go street preaching, they would be praying,

Lord, we pray that you would open people's hearts. Lord, we pray that you would make a path for us, go before us and prepare people to hear the gospel, give them ears to hear, give them hearts that would respond.

We pray that you would save people today. We pray that you would bring people to yourself, which, of course, is quite inconsistent, but it was very thankful.

But when they got downtown and actually stood up and preached, they would say, well, God has done his part, and you have to do your part now, and your part is to believe the gospel that we've just told you about.

So I do think that it's helpful to remember that people are often better than their theology.

And as a corrective to us who call ourselves Reformed, we often don't live up to our theology.

So just kind of a qualification there. I don't want to come off as too harsh or judgmental, but I do think that being

Reformed makes a big difference in both the practice and the consequences of evangelism. And I'm glad to explain some of those differences by way of contrast, if you'd like.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay, good. So, you know, a man -centered approach to the gospel in terms of one's view of God, love is

God's chief attribute. And, of course, we want to affirm that God is love, as the

Scripture teaches. But in a God -centered approach, holiness and love are equally important attributes of God.

God is not just loving, but He's just and holy as well as merciful.

So both those things have to be emphasized. If you emphasize one to the absence of the other, then you have an imbalanced view of God that's actually being promoted.

Or in a man -centered view of God, you have God as a friend who will help you, as opposed to a

God -centered approach, which is, you know, God is a king, or Jesus is Lord, who will save you as opposed to just help you.

And not only a view of God, but a view of humanity. A man -centered approach is, what's man's problem?

Well, they need love, they need help, they need friendship. Whereas from a God -centered perspective, we want to promote, we want to preach, that, no, the problem is that man needs a new nature.

He needs a new mind, he needs a new heart, he needs a new will, he needs to be born again, he needs to be made new.

Regeneration is to be made new again, right, to regenerate. And it's not only that humanity is sick or ignorant, but from a

God -centered perspective, humanity is dead and lost. I frequently point out to people that man's problem is not lack of knowledge.

The Bible says in Romans 1, for example, that men know God, which is a fascinating statement, theologically, that could be elaborated on.

But the truth is that all people know God. They don't lack knowledge of God, but they suppress that truth in unrighteousness.

And it's because they love sin and do not love God that we can highlight for people that they're dead, they're lost, and therefore they need to be saved.

So, in a man -centered approach, when you get to the person and work of Jesus Christ, you often have an emphasis on his crucifixion and his death, which, of course, again, is essential and important.

But it's not more important than his life. Both his death and his life are equally important.

And why is that? Well, because God's requirements from the Garden of Eden going forward was that man be perfectly obedient, and in failing to be obedient, pay the penalty for disobedience.

So, one doesn't need just a person or God to pay the wages of sin, which is death, but you also need righteousness, which we lack, which

Christ earned by his life of perfect obedience. So, both of those things are equally important.

The whole question, which is interesting, it's been resurrected in recent days, even in Reformed circles, as I'm sure you're aware,

Chris, about the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It was a controversy 20, 30 years ago with John MacArthur out in California and sensational theologies, you know, is that you can have

Jesus as Savior, he doesn't have to be Lord. But from a God -centered perspective, we want to affirm everything the

Bible says, that an attitude of submission to Christ's Lordship is necessary for salvation.

As former Reformed thinkers have said, if Christ is not

Lord of all, he is not Lord at all. If I could just interject there, that's one of the main problems with the consequences of a man -centered approach, is if you are promoting the idea that Jesus can be

Savior without being Lord, then you're promoting the idea, at least ostensibly, that you can be saved without any change of behavior in your life, without any repentance, without any new devotion to the

Lord. And I can't tell you how many people I've met over the years walking around the streets in New York, and, you know, you generate discussions when you're out on the streets, and you find out somebody claims to be a

Christian, and, oh, well, you know, where do you go to church? Or, you know, what's your life like?

And they've never darkened the doors of a church. Their life is not changed from a life of either promiscuity or drunkenness or whatever, but because they said a prayer once, and because they believe that Jesus saved them because of that, they're walking around thinking they're a

Christian. Which, you know, I take very seriously, because they are deceived. They are people that will wake up on the

Day of Judgment and hear Jesus say to them, you know, away from me, I never knew you, you doers of lawlessness.

You know, they never managed to walk the walk. And it comes back to the whole invitation system.

God invites you and just waits for you to accept His offer, as opposed to a

God -centered perspective which says, well, yeah, it's a loving command which you need to obey.

You need to respond to it with repentance and faith. In fact, if we could pick up right on the invitation system when we come back from our first station break, because that's a very important and controversial and highly misunderstood area.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Pastor Paul Murphy of Messiah's Reform Fellowship in Manhattan, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. We'll be right back with Paul Murphy right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Thank you. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you had just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program today is

Paul Murphy, who is pastor of Messiah's Reform Fellowship in Gramercy Park, New York City.

And if you would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

And we are discussing reform evangelism and urban missions. And right before the break, we were just starting to enter into a discussion on the altar call system, also called the invitation system, something that most, but not all, but the vast majority of Reformed Christians reject, not only as being something unbiblical, but something being ahistorical, something that really came into being after the revivals of Charles Finney, who most

Reformed Christians would view as a very dangerous heretic. But we have a listener who has a question that is on that issue, so I figured

I would take that listener's question right away, now that we're back from the break.

And this is from Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina, a very long -time faithful listener of the show, very generous supporter of the show.

Grady says, Greetings, brothers living in the South. I find that most people will say they're

Christians if you ask them, and that's because of the invitation system. They think it's enough to believe about Christ, and because they walked an aisle, were baptized, and joined a church.

This is all they have to do. No change of direction, just continuing on in their sin.

Was Charles Finney the inventor of the invitation system, or did it exist before he made it popular?

I know it's done more to fuel easy -believism than anything else

I know. That's Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina. Do you have an answer,

Paul? Yeah. Hi, Grady. Thank you for submitting that question.

Yeah, it's problematic throughout the entire country. I think that, for a variety of reasons, it may be more prevalent in the

South, but that certainly is a problem. I think two things.

One, what leads to this, and then how to deal with the consequences of it.

First of all, what leads to that? I think that Chris is certainly right.

It's a consequence of Charles Finney. Charles Finney taught that conversion was the result of the right use of means, which means that if you just find the right means, you'll get the desired end, which is conversion, which led to manipulating people with various methods, music, one thing or the other, but also a very deficient message as well.

You asked whether it existed before that. It may have. I'm not the best historian.

Chris may be better able to answer that. But Charles Finney is the one who made it or popularized it in terms of what we see in the invitation system, crusade evangelism, most evangelistic presentations that you see in contemporary

North American evangelicalism. What leads to that is that somehow we have the ability, we have the power, we're in the driver's seat when it comes to the gospel, so we make a decision and God responds to our decision.

And all that's necessary for that is to ascend to certain truths of the gospel, recognize them, acknowledge them mentally without any change of heart or change of the will, which comes about as a work of the

Holy Spirit in a true conversion. Often there's an absence of a call for repentance in that particular method of evangelism as well.

It's just simply believe. You made reference to easy believism, for example, but the gospel right from the beginning of Jesus' preaching ministry was repent and believe for the kingdom is here.

So repentance is essential not only in the preaching ministry of Jesus but also in the apostles as well.

And that's what accounts for the fact that there's no change of life because they've not been told.

They need to turn from sin. They need to forsake sin. They need to change the direction in which their life was going in order to now follow

God faithfully in loving, thankful obedience to his commands. Another consequence of that is assurance.

You have a very superficial means of assurance simply because you have responded to the invitation or you have prayed the prayer or you have walked the sawdust trail, as is often said.

And once you do that, then you are often provided with assurance.

Nothing you do now can cause you to lose your salvation. You can be assured that because you prayed that prayer or whatever particular action in response that you are now a

Christian, God loves you, and you will have heaven as your eternal destiny. But that is not what we see in the preaching of Jesus and the apostles.

Assurance comes from the Holy Spirit, and it comes from applying biblical promises to the conscience and affecting a changed life.

So those are some things which contribute to that. And just for a moment,

I'd like to also deal with the consequences, as I mentioned that previously. Oh, I'm sorry, not just consequences.

How do you deal with the consequences of that? If you have a lot of people that have been misled into thinking easy believism, decisional regeneration, that by simply praying a prayer, they're assured of salvation without any change in their life.

How do you deal with those kinds of people, which obviously, Grady, you have encountered and which gives rise to your question?

I think you have to turn to those passages in the Bible, like I mentioned earlier, Matthew chapter 7, where Jesus says, away from me, you evildoers.

I never knew you. Now, in that context, he's speaking to false prophets, but that's applicable also that if you are an evildoer, a doer of iniquity, if you are not one who loves

God and keeps his word and follows him faithfully, then that would apply to you as well. I think other passages, such as the warnings in Corinthians and Hebrews, I think specifically of 1

Corinthians chapter 6, where Paul says in verse 9 and following, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolatrous adulterers men who practice homosexuality, thieves, greedy, drunkards, revilers, swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

And those warnings, I think, are there for a purpose.

And Paul, the author of Hebrews, elsewhere, is addressing his hearers, who apparently were deceived, into thinking that they could live an immoral life, an unchanged life, a profligate life, and still be assured of heaven as their eternal destiny.

And he warns them not to be deceived. You can't do this. So when we run into people like you mentioned,

Grady, I think that's an approach. You don't want to beat somebody over the head. You don't want to beat them up necessarily.

But I think gently you can just say, your life doesn't match your testimony.

And that's a problem, according to the Bible. And you ought to consider what Jesus, what the apostles say about a life that doesn't live up to your testimony.

As a matter of fact, this was instrumental in my wife's conversion. She had undergone some experience, apparently, in her younger years.

When she moved to New York, she was working with a faithful Christian, and related to her, well, oh, you're a

Christian, I'm a Christian too. And this individual said to her, well, you would never know it.

Your life doesn't reflect that at all. And that really caused my wife to really think about what it meant to be a

Christian, and led her to where she is now. That's interesting.

My dear friend William Webster, who's a very well -known

Reformed Baptist author, has written things for Banner of Truth, and has published his own books as well.

But his late wife, in fact I interviewed her on her testimony, she was raised in the

Christian Reformed Church. And as you were saying before, sometimes Reformed Christians are guilty of doing things that are not necessarily the hallmarks of our theological system, that are basically aberrancies from it.

And Bill's wife was raised believing she was a

Christian, just because she was raised in a Christian home. Just because she was born of Christian parents, and baptized as an infant, and so on, that she later came to realize that her life really gave no true evidence of new life.

And she had a real difficult time of soul -searching, and realized that she had come to believe that she was never saved to begin with, and she cried out to the

Lord and was truly saved. And so that's just an interesting providential thing, that his wife had a similar circumstance that yours did.

Yeah, I think that cultural Christianity, which is a label

I assign to those kinds of descriptions, is certainly a big problem,

I think that's what Grady's referring to in the South. Of course it's a problem in the

North, it's been a problem historically. Back throughout Church history, if you read anything about Biblical Bibles, the history of the

Church and its progress, it's certainly a recurring problem. So, yeah, very much so.

And there's two things, actually, that are very important, I think, to clarify in this discussion.

The first is that easy believism or cheap grace, what we are basically talking about, when somebody believes that somebody can be truly born again, and be headed for Heaven, and nothing's going to change that, and yet there has been no transformation, no evidence of a rebirth in their life, that sometimes has been an overreaction to the heresies of Roman Catholicism, where a sacerdotal system of people believing that they are not only becoming

Christian, but maintaining and preserving their Christianity through their obedience, through their observance of sacraments and rites and rituals, and so on, and some evangelicals have, running away from that or those heresies, adopted other heresies, where repentance is not even a necessity in the life of a person who can claim to be a

Christian, and that those that would dare, like you and I, Pastor Paul, that would dare to say, no, repentance is an essential element of true salvation, they would even say, very often, that we are guilty of teaching a works -righteousness salvation and a

Roman heresy. Both of those things are very dangerous and damnable, aren't they?

Yeah, they are, and I think that, getting back to the lordship controversy, that was what was at the heart of the lordship controversy with John MacArthur, you know, 20, 30 years ago, whenever that was, and it's arisen again today, the discussion about antinomianism and works, with people believing that if you teach repentance as a necessary ingredient, that that works, and of course that's just not true.

The Bible affirms that repentance is a gift, as much as faith is.

But it is something that we must do, we must repent, but God gives the ability to do that.

But yes, it's an essential ingredient, to be sure. Well, we have to go to our midway break right now.

The midway break is a longer -than -normal break that we have in the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, which airs this program in a pre -recorded format twice a day, they require of us a longer break in the middle of the show, because the

FCC requires of them to localize their programming, including

Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, to Lake City, Florida. So they air their own public service announcements and other local things in the middle of the show, while we, simultaneously, are airing our globally heard commercials.

So please use this time wisely, not only please be patient with us as we take this longer break, but please use this time to write down as much of the information as you can, provided by our advertisers, so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them, or at the very least, when you can't patronize them, when you can't purchase their products, use their services, visit their churches, when you can't do those things, at least, if you could, please reach out to them to thank them for sponsoring

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We absolutely, positively depend on the finances that come in through our advertisers to exist.

So please contact our advertisers, use their services, purchase their products whenever possible, visit their churches whenever possible, but also just reach out to them to thank them for sponsoring this show.

And also, use this time to write down questions on reform evangelism and urban missions for our guest,

Paul Murphy, of Messiah's Reform Fellowship in Gramercy Park, New York City. And that email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with Paul Murphy. Here's what

Gary DeMar, president of American Vision, had to say about Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio recently.

Good to be back, Chris. I always enjoy our time. I have to tell you, you're one of the better interviewers out there, and I've been doing this for more than 30 years.

Wow, that's some compliment. How much do I owe you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

We're in good shape. I'm glad you said it on the air, so I don't have to brag about myself.

Tell your friends and loved ones about Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, airing live Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p .m.

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John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the

Iron Sherpa's Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions, while always defending the key doctrines of the

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Internet where folk won't be led astray. I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.

This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time.

And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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where you can click support. That's ironsherpanzironradio .com As host of Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshipped and how he shall be represented in the world.

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio. [♪ music playing ♪

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Before we return to our guest today, Paul Murphy of Messiah's Reformed Fellowship in Gramercy Park, New York City, just have some important announcements to make.

First of all, many of you listening may be very interested to know that tomorrow we have a returning guest to our program, somebody that I really love to interview, somebody that I find utterly fascinating and biblically -informed.

His name is Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III. He is an author and pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, and we're going to be addressing the theme,

How Can We Know If America Is Under God's Judgment? Gleanings from Isaiah Chapter 3.

So that will be tomorrow on Iron Trump and Zion Radio, and our show is every day,

Monday through Friday, and I'm sure you will be blessed by every guest and topic that we have every day, but one in particular that I think you might want to make note of is that Doug Wilson will be returning to the program on Friday the 22nd of January, and Doug is going to be speaking on a very timely issue, something that immediately grabbed my attention from a blog article he wrote on the title

The Gods of Civil Unrest and Jesus Mobs. That will be on Friday, January 22nd, on Iron Trump and Zion Radio.

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and put advertising in the subject line. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a local

Bible -believing church, I may be able to help you find a church that is biblically faithful no matter where on the planet

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That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Paul Murphy, who is the pastor of Messiah's Reformed Fellowship in Gramercy Park, New York City, which is a congregation in the

United Reformed Church of North America, which adheres to the three forms of unity as their confessional standards, and a biblically sound, thoroughly

Reformed church that I could hardly recommend. And if you have a question for Pastor Paul, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com We are continuing our discussion on Reformed evangelism and urban missions, and we would love to hear from you.

And before I go to a listener question, Pastor Paul, I just wanted to have one more thing said about the invitation system, because there are evangelicals who are sometimes astonished, and they're disturbed, deeply disturbed and shocked when they visit a

Reformed church. And they may even hear a powerful message, a powerful message about sin and repentance.

And they say to themselves when the service is over, What? There was no altar call? What an opportunity for an altar call.

What an opportunity to get a soul saved at that point when such a powerful, penetrating message was delivered.

And many folks, because that is their tradition that they know, that if you are a person who believes in the

Bible, if you believe in the necessity of Christ's death, burial and resurrection, and faith in Him to be saved, they think that the altar call or the invitation system is just as important as other elements of the service.

They might even, without calling it that, treat it as a third ordinance of the church. And they know that liberals and leftists and apostates and many in the mainline churches who don't care about salvation don't practice the invitation system or the altar call.

But that's for a completely different reason, isn't it? Yes, that's correct.

It's for a completely different reason. I think that I like to succinctly summarize preaching as explanation and application of the

Bible. And where that happens, you're going to have you're going to have the

Holy Spirit at work and if the Holy Spirit at work is if the

Holy Spirit is at work in the hearts and minds of the hearers there, then there's no need to resort to an invitation system with its deficiencies as we outlined prior to the break.

I think you I'm not a believer in homiletical do -nothingism as if it's there's nothing a preacher needs to do except leave it to the work of the

Holy Spirit. But I do think that where you faithfully explain and apply the Bible, the power of the

Word and the work of the Holy Spirit are sufficient to elicit a response from people.

I would add to that, though, that I think it is important to recognize that there may be unbelievers present in a corporate worship setting.

As a matter of fact, I would hope that there are unbelievers present in a corporate worship setting, and we should make the message comprehensible.

I'm not talking about watering it down at all, but being sensitive to the fact that people may not be up to par with theological vocabulary amongst

Reformed people, and therefore we should be sensitive to that. And I also think that unbelievers can be addressed in the worship service in terms of whether or not they have addressing objections that people might have to certain things that are being taught.

So I don't think that you have to resort to the invitation system in order to address unbelievers or elicit a response from hearers.

And also the term we're using, invitation system, might also confuse people when they are hearing us saying that we reject it.

We do invite people to repent and flee to Christ, do we not? And is there not a difference between that and saying that if somebody goes through a physical motion of walking forward at an isle to a so -called altar, which in reality, historically

Protestant churches don't have altars, it's a Roman Catholic phenomenon, but to have somebody come forward and act as if this prayer uttered by a minister that is parroted by the sinner, almost like a magic spell or like a sacrament is going to bring that person to eternal life, even if there's no genuine change in the person, that is what we're condemning, is the danger of giving people false assurance and even adding something to the practice of the

Church that is unbiblical or not even existing in the Scriptures or in Church history until rather recently.

Yeah, I think that that's what we were talking about prior to the break. I think that's why I think that the, you know, contrary to a penny that we talked about, conversion is the right, the result of the right use of means, and means which are often manipulative.

We can have confidence in the preaching of God's Word. That is the means that He has ordained.

You know, faith comes by hearing and not by the Word of Christ, and it's preaching the Word that Peter says results in people being born again.

So there's no need to enter into manipulative practices or unbiblical methods of doing that, as if somehow people won't be converted unless you resort to those things.

Yes, I agree. Okay, we have an anonymous listener who says,

I know that before you were talking about the difference between man -centered worship, which is false, and God -centered worship, and very often we who are

Reformed will point to churches that have big rock performances with their praise and worship bands, where the congregation itself is not really participating but observing and, dare

I say, even just being entertained. Well, before we only point the fingers at others, don't

Reformed churches also have to be very careful about some of our magnificent choral arrangements and choirs and even classical performances of music that may be very acceptable and historical, and may have lyrics that are

God -centered. But the congregation itself is robbed of participation.

I'm not saying that those things should never take place, but don't they happen sometimes too often, and where the congregation, even in solid theological churches, are sitting back, watching, observing, and being entertained?

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that two things, kind of diverting from the subject of evangelism to worship, but worship is to be a dialogue that occurs between God and His people.

When we gather for worship, we are assembled in the presence of God. That's why we have a greeting, quoting

Scripture, God greeting His people, that's why we have a benediction to end the service, and in between those elements are dialogical facets of worship.

So God speaks, we respond. So I think that whenever there's music, you have to be cautious about it slipping into an entertainment mode.

It's why often in churches, you know, church architecture is a reflection of theology, and it's why in many churches you see a choir loft in the back of the church so that if they're singing, they're not up front, they're not entertaining, they're not the focus of attention.

And that's the reason behind that, surely. So whenever there's music being performed, music and song, choral pieces are an amazingly powerful form of communication.

Luther, I think it was Luther who said, he held up the Bible in one hand, he says, this is what we learn, and he had music in the other, and he says, this is how we keep it.

So there's certainly value to music. We don't want to do away with it, but it needs to have its proper place in worship.

If we want to have choral performances,

I hesitate to use that word, but if we want an emphasis on choral singing, then let it be done as something outside of worship.

In many churches, there are hymn things apart from worship, and there are choral displays that are glorious, but they're not part of worship.

They're something that are done separate from worship. Well, let's enter into the second half of our theme today, which is urban missions, and we were given some of the reasons in the very beginning when

I was introducing you as to why there is a unique aspect of urban missions.

They're very often places where liberalism or even leftist totalitarianism have a strong hold, where people are more outwardly in opposition to the

Gospel, to a literal understanding of the

Scriptures, and a view that they are truly God -breathed, and that they are inerrant and infallible, and that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to salvation.

You have many urban areas, probably most, at least in the northern part of the

United States, where this is anathema, this is the very antithesis of what love and kindness are, and so therefore the

Gospel is more outwardly an enemy than typically may be found in the more rural area, where even if people are as dead as a doornail spiritually, in the

Bible Belt in many places, there are places where Christianity is beloved, not when people are telling an individual to repent, necessarily, but the existence of the churches and the hearing of Gospel music and even preaching on the radio and television, it's a part of another

It's something that is just as American as hot dogs and baseball, apple pie, etc.

But if you could tell us specifically what you want to address about urban missions, what makes it unique?

Yeah, just to dovetail with what you just said, I think that we have to recognize that urban centers, at least in North America and probably most of the world, have become bastions of secular humanism, and I would certainly affirm what you said about the absence of the

Gospel, and even a distaste for Christianity, but that only highlights,

I think, the challenge that faces the Church in preaching the

Gospel in urban areas, and I think that for a few different reasons, Chris. I think that in addition to that which probably gets prominence in our discussions about cities, we have to recognize other attributes of cities, and I'd like to use

New York as an example of that, is that urban populations are teeming with immigrants.

In one zip code in New York City, there are 133 different nationalities in 150 different languages.

That's two -thirds of the world's populations represented in one tiny area of New York City.

In many areas in New York City, you won't even hear or see anything of the English language.

The population of New York City is one -third foreign -born, with immigrants and their children accounting for 60 % of the residents.

Now, that's something you don't hear much about in contrast to secular humanism, a population of cities.

There are more Jamaicans in New York City than any city in Jamaica, more Jews than any city outside Israel, more

Asians than the capital of Haiti, there are 400 ,000 Russians in Brooklyn alone, and Brooklyn is only one of five boroughs that make up, or counties that make up,

New York City. Why do I emphasize that? I emphasize that because we as Christians believe that we are to preach the gospel in accordance with the

Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. Urban missions is simply emphasizing the fact that God has now brought the nations to the neighborhood.

You can fulfill the Great Commission without ever leaving New York City. It is literally, perhaps, the greatest mission field in the world, because God has brought all nations here.

So it's not just a challenge of secular humanism, which the Church should meet with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but we have a unique opportunity to reach the nations of the world without ever leaving home.

That's not to say that foreign missions shouldn't be done, but it is to say that you don't have to go to a far corner of the world to make disciples of all nations.

You can do that right here in New York City, and that's increasingly the case in many urban centers across the country.

I was recently in Salem, Oregon, with a population of 250 ,000 people.

There were 35 different nationalities there. Immigrants are filling our cities, and we have a unique opportunity to reach them with the gospel there.

And an interesting thing about that is the contrast between the secular humanist populations of the cities and the immigrant populations of the cities.

When you look at the Bible, at least in North America, the secular humanist population of our country, condensed in city areas, urban areas, are basically those people that have had the gospel and rejected it.

Their second, third, fourth generation descendants of Christians, they know.

I find very few people that don't know who Jesus Christ is or what the Bible is, but they by and large rejected it.

Immigrants, on the other hand, have by and large never heard of it. So you have an opportunity in that contrast to reach.

Immigrants are often more open, more receptive to the gospel than hardened secular descendants of Americans.

So that's a very interesting thing that we ought to recognize and capitalize on. And I think that historically, people have often abandoned the cities because of seeing them as centers of sin, immorality, secularism, forces which were opposed to Christianity, and we need to rethink that and reconsider the population of cities and reconsider what the

Bible has to say about cities as well. You know, the Bible begins in a garden, but it ends in a city.

That's something to take note of. The cities in the Bible are not always

Babylon. So, as a matter of fact, in the book of Acts, if we were to ask how did the apostles, the disciples of Jesus, understand how they were to fulfill the great commission which had been entrusted to them, it would be urban missions.

And all we need to do to look at that is the book of Acts. The book of Acts begins in Jerusalem, the most sacred city at the time, and ends in Rome, the most secular city, with about 17 cities in between.

Paul's missionary journeys went to urban centers. And I would submit that if we want to be biblical in conducting our missions, urban missions should be the pattern that we should follow.

And I'm imagining that a challenge of urban missions is something that involves a phrase that I am about to use that I hear it regurgitated so much in the media that it makes my skin crawl because it's usually used in slanderous ways by leftists who are anchor people on news programs and hosts of talk shows.

But I'm going to use the term xenophobia. People are hurling the accusation of xenophobia against anybody who believes that we should take seriously illegal immigration into our country and that kind of a thing.

We're automatically labeled as a racist and the leftists like to appear to be intellectual so they'll throw out the phrase xenophobia on a daily basis, multiple times a day in the media, but they'll never define it.

What it basically means, for those of you listening who don't know, it is a fear of foreigners or a fear of anybody that's different from you.

So I'm assuming that a genuine challenge when you're evangelizing and you may have a specific ethnic group in your area that you want to reach with the gospel, that there is a hurdle perhaps that has to be overcome for these people to feel a certain level of acceptance and welcome and safety and peace and so on by entering through your doors without giving them a false gospel message.

Now obviously our our duty as Christians is not to make people feel comfortable in their sin, but there is an aspect where we want people to feel comfortable to know that we are not racists, we are not bigots, we don't hate these people in our surrounding area who are from a different ethnic group or color than maybe the dominant presence in our church.

So if you could just touch on what I've just said. Sure. I think that it's interesting that you mentioned xenophobia because in the

Bible what's promoted is actually xenophilia which is not fear of the stranger or the alien, but love of the stranger or the alien.

In numerous places throughout the New Testament and even in the Old which I'll get to in a moment, we see that we are to practice hospitality to the stranger, to the alien and that is an important aspect of ministry is to provide a warm and welcoming context for people that visit the church whatever nationality or race or tongue they may belong to because that is what the

Scripture mandates. I think also I made reference to the

Old Testament when you look at the Old Testament there were four groups of people that were particularly identified by God as close to Him and that Israel was to have concern for.

There was the widow and the orphan because they had no head and no provider. There were the poor and that's a whole subject in itself.

And the fourth was the alien. Is that Israel was to be concerned for the alien because they were aliens and God rescued them and redeemed them.

So as God had mercy extended to them when they were aliens, they were to extend mercy to the aliens in their midst.

A man in the Christian Reformed Church back in I think it was maybe the 20's or 30's his name was

Albert Teichen H -U -I -S -J -E -N actually formulated a whole mission proposal based on this

Old Testament pattern of loving the alien in your midst. And at the time of course many of the

Dutch which composed the Christian Reformed Church at that time were themselves immigrants.

And Albert Teichen was a minister and was capitalizing on this because in many centers where the

Dutch immigrants were located, there were Jewish immigrants right next door to them.

You think of Chicago or you think of Paterson, New Jersey or you think of New York and of course with other populations as well.

So there was a whole mission strategy developed from Zeno, Stranger, Phelous, Love of Stranger.

So yes, absolutely it should be something that is practiced. Our congregation for example has,

I think last time I checked, well over 20, maybe 25, 28 different nationalities in our congregation.

And we are united by a common love for Jesus. And that's what unites us.

And it's a beautiful, beautiful reflection of the composition of the city, which is so multinational, multiethnic, and yet it's a powerful testimony as well.

And here you come to a kind of a different tack on evangelism or mission, which is a testimony or a witness to the community around you.

We live, I live, not you Chris, but I live in a city that is torn apart by racial strife and inter -ethnic hostility and antagonism towards one another.

And when you can have 28 different nationalities existing together, loving one another, welcoming people into their midst, and united by a common love for Jesus Christ, that is a powerful message that is non -verbally being communicated to people around about you and to people that enter into the congregation for worship and fellowship on a

Sunday. And you'll find that over and over and over again, how people comment on how warmly welcomed and received they were into the

Church. There wasn't an interrogation, there wasn't looking down their noses at anybody, there wasn't, you know, judging anyone, they were just warmly welcomed and received and embraced.

And that has been a very fruitful blessing for our ministry. Praise God.

Those from out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Amen.

And we're going to our final break right now. It's a lot more brief than the last breaks. If you have a question you'd like to ask, send it in immediately because we are rapidly running out of time.

And our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

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Welcome back and this is our final segment of today's interview with Paul Murphy of Messiah's Reformed Fellowship in Gramercy Park in New York City.

We are at this section of the show focusing on urban missions and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know does

Pastor Murphy have any practical advice on how we can overcome the xenophobia in different racial and ethnic groups in our area that may be preventing them from coming into our church to visit our worship services just out of fear that they might be treated with bigotry or hostility.

Sure. I think that first thing is the church should reflect the composition of the community in which it is located.

Of course that will differ from area to area and in New York that will differ for different parts of the city.

But I think that's one thing and a very important thing is that you reflect the composition of the area in which you're located.

If people see you are so different from them that's just going to set up an artificial barrier that's going to involuntarily communicate the message that yeah,

I'm just too different, I won't be welcome there. I think the other is to serve your community in different ways.

I think that, and I'm not talking about social gospel or something. Serve it with the gospel.

For example, when we started we were located down in Lower Manhattan which is near Chinatown and near housing projects which are populated by pan -Hispanic populations and predominantly

Chinese. What we did was, and they were predominantly immigrant populations, we taught

English as a second language. We offered that as a service, a ministry of the church.

And it wasn't just English as a second language but it was English as a second language specifically using a curriculum with the gospel according to Mark as a text for students to learn grammar and vocabulary so that people could come from various ethnic and national backgrounds.

What they had in common was that they didn't speak the native language used in the

United States or in New York City which is English and we would teach that to them.

But we did it using the gospel, using the Bible. So the first sentence that a student would say on day one of class was, this is the good news of Jesus Christ according to Mark.

And that was very successful in overcoming differences and in overcoming any potential antagonism that might be amongst the population.

So you serve the community but you serve it with the gospel. It's not a social gospel.

Now there might be other things you could think of as well along those lines. Did anyone from your congregation or does anyone from your congregation speak the foreign languages of those that are coming to these meetings or are you able to teach

English as a second language without knowing their, the audience's native tongue?

Yeah, both. I had five years of Latin, three years of Spanish.

I can't speak Spanish. I'm a little familiar with it. But we are actually a predominantly

Hispanic congregation. Many people have English as a second language.

So we have a lot of Spanish speakers. We have had Chinese speakers over the years. And we have tried to incorporate that even into our worship services for a while.

We had people coming that spoke no English. So we had somebody sit in the balcony and translate for them, which was then broadcasted to earpieces that they had in their ears.

So there are various ways that you can do that. But you don't need to have people who speak those languages in order to do a successful ESL ministry.

Well, I'd like you to have now about four minutes of uninterrupted time where you can summarize all that you most want to be etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before they leave this program.

Sure. Well, thank you for that. It's been a pleasure to be with you and for those of you in the listening audience, thank you for tuning in and for giving your attention.

I hope that it has been instructive, and I hope it has been beneficial. And ultimately,

I hope that God is glorified by what has been taught and received here today. What I would like to leave you with as we close today,

I would like to leave you with the need to have the eyes of faith, the eyes of Christ and the heart of Christ for the people that you come into contact with.

Christ, often we read in the Scriptures, was filled with compassion for the people who were like sheep without a shepherd.

And while that might have been the nation of Israel at that particular time, we ought to reflect that today amongst the people

God has sent us to minister. We need to love people.

We need to want to see them come to know Jesus Christ as Savior and as Lord. We want to enfold them into the

Church. We want them to worship God. And, of course, that is the great end of evangelism.

Conversion, salvation of souls, is not the great end of evangelism, as great an end as it is.

The great end of evangelism is to bring people to glorify God, to know and glorify

God. So we need to want to do that. And I would say oftentimes when teaching about evangelism is done, when that's received by churches, it's received often with enthusiasm of people who want to program their church with new programs for evangelism.

I would discourage that. Rather, I would encourage you to program your heart. That's the most important thing.

If your heart is programmed by the gospel, with the gospel, and for the gospel, then you don't need programs.

It will just spill from your lips as you seek to bring people to know

Jesus Christ in a saving way. So I think that's the most important thing.

And I think that also that pertains to urban missions. Cities are in desperate need, as we've talked about, as they become bastions of liberalism and secular humanism.

We are engaged in an ideological war. Paul in 2 Corinthians 10 says we do not fight with weapons of the world.

Rather, we fight and destroy ideas and pretenses that raise themselves up against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.

We are involved in an ideological warfare with secular humanism, with liberalism that reign in our cities.

But we have a message that is supernatural. We have a spiritual message, a gospel that is attended by the

Spirit of God and by the Word of God that comes from the Word of God that is living and active and sharper than any two -edged sword.

And rather than shrink back in defeat or shrink back in fear, we ought to go boldly, not arrogantly, not defiantly, not as Bible bangers, not shoving it down people's throats, but we ought to go back confidently with the

Word of God, relying on the Spirit of God, that the risen and reigning Lord Jesus Christ is the one who rules things and is directing the affairs of men and nations to His appointed ends.

And He has won the victory. And we can go forth confidently representing

Him and making Him known to those around about us, telling them to turn from sin, which ultimately will prove futile in their empty lives and ultimately prove deadly in eternal destruction, and have them trust in the

Lord Jesus Christ, whom to know is eternal life. And may

God bless us in those efforts. Amen. And once again, the website for the Messiah's Reformed Fellowship in Gramercy Park, New York City is merfnyc .org.

merfnyc .org. I also want to invite our listeners to join me on January 28th in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, to attend an event with Voti Baucom, who is going to be speaking against critical race theory.

And if you want more information on registering for that event, you can contact

Jacob Tanner, who is orchestrating this event, and his email address is jacob at mountbethelmcclure, and that's m -t -b -e -t -h -e -l -m -c -c -l -u -r -e dot com.

You can also send me an email, and I'll make sure you get that information to chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.