10 Years of Beholding God: Paul Washer, pt 1

Welcome to the WHOLE Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder and I'm here to commemorate the 10th anniversary coming up for our Behold Your God study, Rethinking God Biblically. Now, whenever you do videos like this with contributors, the interviews are much longer than what we were able to include in the study.

We had to leave by far the majority of their comments out. And so, Teddy has been working over the last weeks and he will continue to work to get all these interviews in their entirety available to you.

And we think that really that's a great way to celebrate the 10 years. And I hope that you will be as benefited by them now as we were 10 years ago listening to these men talk about such important topics.

You're about to hear material from the interview with Paul Washer. Of all the men that contributed to the first study, Paul is probably the best known on the internet. Paul, when I met him, I had listened to just a couple of his sermons.

I'd listened to a couple of his sermons on the gospel and I'd listened to the famous sermon where, you know, the 10 indictments against the church. Now, I want to be completely honest. I had just come back from Britain where men preached powerfully, but not very emotionally necessarily.

You know, certainly not in an American idea of emotional. It was somewhat restrained. And then I heard Paul preach and I was listening to him, you know, on a CD at the time. And Paul would just break down crying in the middle of the sermon on the gospel.

And I had a little bit of a negative reaction to that. I'd been in Britain for three years and I thought, can't you hold it together, man? You're preaching. And so I got halfway through those sermons and I would turn them off.

I met Paul personally through Anthony Methenia a couple of years later. And of course, I'd continued to hear good things about Paul. And when I met Paul, we were all going out to lunch together. I was shocked.

I was shocked at the genuineness of Paul, at the complete, you know, the complete absence of any strutting or bravado. You know, he was just so humble and real. Later, Paul came and visited the little church here in North Mississippi.

And one of my friends called me and said, hey, do you know that Paul Washer's coming to visit the church this morning to see how we conduct worship and how we do things here at Christ Church in New Albany?

And I said, well, no, I didn't know that. And he said, does it make you nervous? And I said, well, not really, because I can't preach any better. You know, I mean, I'm doing the best I can. So it's not like I could say, well, I guess I should preach better today because Paul will be here.

So I just got off the phone and prayed and asked the Lord to help me not to think about Paul Washer. We, you know, we had the service. We eat lunch together, usually after our main service on Sunday. And then Paul came and sat down with me and another elder of the church, who was an older man, who was a lay elder.

And Paul asked a lot of serious questions, you know, questions that he really wanted answers from. And again, I was shocked. Why would he want answers from me? I was a younger believer. And this older gentleman, while an older believer, had never been a minister of the gospel, in the sense that he had never gone to, you know, gotten a seminary degree.

And my co-elder, in the midst of talking with Paul, stopped Paul and rebuked him in a nice way. But he called him on something and said, Paul, I don't think that's right. And it was on a non-moral issue.

It was just an issue of how to discern the will of the Lord. And I thought, oh, you're rebuking Paul Washer and, you know, and what will he think of that? And Paul received it. And I was just, again, wonderfully encouraged by Paul's humility.

I know Paul is known as, you know, this fiery preacher, and at times he is. I would say that Paul has a gift, unique almost in our day, an ability to speak to the large groups in a way that is penetrating.

I have heard Paul preach in, you know, in conferences where I felt that I could not look away, and I have never felt that with any other minister. I mean, I have been greatly benefited by the ministers, but it was as if in this one sermon in particular, it's as if God grabs your face and you can't kind of zone out in the middle of the sermon and look around and then come back.

It was as if you dare not look away. The weightiness, the spiritual unction on Paul's preaching was so helpful. And I remember right after that sermon, Mr. Richard Owen Roberts was there preaching as well at the same conference, and I was taking Mr. Roberts to lunch, and he was probably in his late 70s, early 80s at that time.

And so we got in the car, and I said to him, this was the first time he had heard Paul preach in person. So I said, so what do you think? And Mr. Roberts turned and said, extraordinary. I can die now.

So I think he meant now that I've heard Paul, and I know that he's preaching this way, there's no need for me anymore. I can go on and be with Christ. Well, we're glad Mr. Roberts has not yet gone and joined the believers in the church victorious.

But I think that what he said about Paul is true, and I hope that you benefit from the rest of the interview. A .W. Tozer claimed.

That what a man thinks about God is the most important thing about that man. Can you explain to us why he would believe that, or why we should believe that today? I would agree with Tozer that.

Our view of God determines absolutely everything. Every doctrine that we believe is somehow hinged, directly related to our view of God. It affects everything. It colors everything. Now, I would agree with Tozer, and I have a great respect for Tozer, but I can go beyond Tozer to quote a higher authority, and that would be, of course, Jeremiah.

And he tells us that wise men, even wise men, should not boast in their wisdom, and that men of great strength should not boast in their might, and that rich men, of course, should not boast in their riches.

But the one who boasts should boast in this. God says that he understands me and that he knows me. It's from that knowledge of God that everything else flows. We can't even begin to understand the works of God unless we understand the attributes of God.

Let me give you an example. There is no reason for the atonement unless we understand that God is righteous and holy. There is no reason why sin is a problem unless we understand, again, that God is a righteous and holy God.

Everything that we know about Christianity is built upon the foundation of the attributes of God. And that's something that today is almost, it's not only is it not understood, it's not even discussed.

Many times when I'm teaching pastors around the world, and many of them who have gone to Bible institutes or Bible colleges or even seminaries, I will ask them, how many of you in your Bible college time, how many of you studied the attributes of God?

A few will raise their hands. I'll say, how many years in the course of four years did you study it? None of them. They'll say, well, we had a systematic theology class and for about three weeks we concentrated on the attributes of God.

And so I'll go on to seminary. Basically the same thing. And then I'll ask them about their own private devotion since they've been a minister, maybe 15, 20 years. How much time have you dedicated to studying the attributes of God?

And they almost, you can see them turn to one another and look at one another like we never even knew that it was something that we ought to be doing. I mean, Christianity is about God. And so if you're going to be involved in Christianity and you're going to be a minister in Christianity, your greatest endeavor is to know this God that you're called to proclaim.

And I think this is one of the reasons why we've fallen into pragmatism, because we have nothing else to say. When you know God and are able to proclaim him clearly, that's all the people need is to understand God and his works.

When you do not have that, then you have to build a circus around Christianity of entertainment, of self-help, of self-realization. And of course, that plays right into our culture today. So I would absolutely agree with Tozer on this matter.

Now, there's something else when we take it down on a personal level, especially as a father. Now, I teach my children almost daily in the scriptures, and we have a detailed thing that we work through when we're studying the word of God.

But I'm always aware that these scriptures, though they are the word of God, they do not by themselves, they do not have the power to give eternal life. They testify of the one who gives eternal life, and that is God in Christ.

And so I'm not just taking my children or my family through a set of principles or rules or even a Christian ethic. I want to show them God. I must show them God. It is the same way when I'm standing in a pulpit.

It's the same way when I'm walking up and down the street or when I'm having a simple conversation with a person. The greatest thing that we can discuss, the most necessary thing is who is God,.

What has he done, and what has this God required of us? Without denying there is healthy growth and healthy churches, can you respond to Tozer's claim that the American church is 2 ,000 miles wide but only a half inch deep?

I agree with Tozer's claim that the church is 2 ,000 miles wide and a.

Half inch deep, but I would like to say it in a different way. I believe that the church is 2 ,000 miles wide but far more sparsely populated than what people think. You see, if we say that the church is 2 ,000 miles wide and a half inch deep, then someone can misinterpret Tozer and think he's saying that the church is filled up with a lot of Christians who are superficial and carnal and do not walk their talk.

I don't think that's what Tozer means. I think he means what I'm saying, that the church is spread out over all this country of ours, 2 ,000 miles, but it's sparsely populated. Not everyone who says they are Christian is Christian, and that's why it looks a half inch deep.

You see, we have to understand, again, the scriptures and the doctrine of sanctification and the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a man. When Christ saves a man, he regenerates him, and then there's this relentless providence of God that will see to it that the God who began a good work will also finish it.

A Christian cannot stay a half inch deep. He simply can not. In his New Testament commentary, Craig Blomberg, I don't think I'll be able to quote him directly here, but it's an excellent statement. He says that the percentage of Christians or the percentage of true converts in places where Christianity is popular is perhaps not as different from the percentage of Christians in places in times where Christians have been persecuted.

And what he's saying is simply this. What I have known through my travels throughout the world the last 30 years is this. You can go to some far eastern country and say, well, less than 3 or less than 4 of the people there are Christian.

What people don't realize is that we can say the same thing about our own country. We can say the same thing about the West. Even though there's a great deal of activity, that doesn't mean that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord is truly saved.

That's the purpose of what Jesus is saying in Matthew 7. So many people misunderstand his teaching when he says that the way is narrow, few will find it. The way that is broad, many will find it. Many will walk through that path and be destroyed.

They have this idea that what Christ is talking about is that there's this huge secular world that does not confess him, and then there's a group of people that do confess him, and that group is smaller than the greater majority.

Now, that's not what he's saying. He's not even talking about the secular world here. What he's talking about is this. Among those who claim to be his disciples, among those who confess his name, few will find it.

That's why when you go down through the rest of the text, you see these great warnings. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, but he'll say, depart from me, I never knew you.

And what's most amazing there is he's basically saying this, depart from me, those of you who claim to be my disciples, and yet you lived as though I never gave you a law to obey.

And so, yes, I would agree with Tozer. Many people see problems in the church, but what do you diagnose as the true root issues that must be dealt with?

Anytime we talk about a reformation or a revival, it always has to do with a returning to scripture. Always, always. But you can return to scripture in a wrong way. If you return to scripture to find life principles, if you return to scripture to find out how you can have your best life now, self-realization, self-promotion, how you can order things in your life in such a way as to be the most blessed as possible, then you've not returned to scripture.

Returning to scripture is the means of returning to God, to appreciate God, to esteem God. The scriptures and the principles of scripture are not an end in themselves, but it is God and his Christ and what he has done in the world.

The only way we're going to fix this situation is through men who truly have a high view of God and his Christ and his gospel, and who communicate that through their life, they communicate that through their preaching.

And then from there, interpreting the Bible through the attributes of God, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, then we can begin to see proper teaching going out into the church, causing a great deal of healing.

You know, there are misdiagnosis, even among those who say, we've got to get back to the word, because they get back to the word, but they miss the point. It's not about ordering our lives. It's about this relationship with God.

It's this relationship with Christ. It's this all-consuming, or as Wesley said, magnificent obsession, not with regard to evangelism, but a magnificent obsession to know God and to understand that the greatest revelation of God has come through the person of Christ and the greatest works of God come through the cross.

And so it's a reformation of returning to the scriptures to return to God. Now, here are some of the factors, some of the things that must happen. First of all, we must return, as we've already said, to an understanding of the one true God, a study of his attributes.

But now we must be careful here. Cold-hearted men, scholastically speaking about the attributes of God, that is not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about are men whose intellects and hearts and lives have been set on fire by a revelation of God in Christ through the scriptures and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We need to return to studying, promoting, teaching, propagating the attributes of God. Now, another thing that goes right in hand with that is the purpose of God in the universe through the person of Jesus Christ.

We must make much of Christ because it is impossible to make much of God and to leave Christ out of the picture. And not only Christ, but the work of Christ. You see, the gospel, people tell me today, you know, that this country is gospel-hardened.

Well, all men have always been gospel-hardened. But the problem is not that the country is gospel-hardened. The problem is the country is gospel-ignorant. And the country is gospel-ignorant because most of the ministers standing behind the pulpit are also ignorant of the gospel.

We must have a recovery of what it means that Jesus died, particularly with regard to substitutionary atonement, penal substitution, the idea that when Christ was on that tree, he bore our sin, that God the Father crushed him under the full judgment that was ours, that before he died, he cried out, it is finished.

It meant he paid in full. He satisfied the justice of God. And because now God's justice is satisfied, his wrath is appeased, and we may be reconciled to God. The gospel must be rediscovered. And then with the gospel, a rediscovery of the gospel invitation.

The gospel invitation is not bow your head and raise your hand and then pray this prayer or come forward. The gospel invitation is repent and believe the gospel. And it comes with great urging and with great warning.

We are to call men to repentance. We are to call men to faith. That's it's the word of scripture. It's the word of the gospel. It's found in all our great confessions in the church. It is repentance and faith.

Another thing that has to be rediscovered is the work of the spirit and the soul of man. You see that salvation, although it involves a decision on the part of men, it is a supernatural. It is the result of the product of a supernatural recreating, regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

And that we need to realize that there are workings of the spirit. There are ways of the spirit that are set before us in the scriptures. It is a lost art of how does a pastor, how does a preacher deal with the soul of the sinner?

How does he pray? How does he watch? How does he teach? How does he instruct? It's all been reduced down to pray this prayer. And that's why we have a half inch deep because we have countless millions of people walking around here, believing they're saved, not because they're looking unto Jesus, but because they're trusting in the sincerity of something they did 20 years ago that has had no impact whatsoever on their life.

Another thing with gospel preaching that must be rediscovered is this gospel warnings that when someone comes to Christ or confesses Christ with me or with any other preacher, we must give them great warnings about continuing on in the faith, that the evidence of true conversion is that he who began a good work continues it.

You see, so there's so many things that must be rediscovered, so many things to do, but it all begins with a right understanding of God. None of us are free from the culture that surrounds us. We are all influenced by so many things.

In reality, God is the only free being that there is. The rest of us are highly influenced. As a young man, I was fortunate to sit under preachers who had a very, very high view of God. As a matter of fact, if I were to line them up, you would find them to be very different in many other aspects.

You would find them, some to be more Calvinistic, some to be more Arminian, some to be more given to the things of the supernatural, others more to the intellect. But all those men had one thing in common, and that was an extremely high view of God.

They were men who were saturated with God. And I'm 50 years old, and I think I was, my generation was one of the last to be able to see those old men that walked with God. They knew God. They trembled and rejoiced in God.

And that had tremendous impact on my life. So one of the things that bothers me today, that scares me, is there has been a resurgence of many of the old truths. But it takes more than just the book, a book written by a man.

It takes more than just, you've grasped these things intellectually. The men who impacted my life and transferred to me a high view of God were men who burned with him. They were on fire for God. They wanted to know God.

They studied God. They sought God in prayer. And so it had a tremendous impact on my life. Now, as early on in my life, the passage that I quoted from Jeremiah 9, you know, that wise men should not boast in wisdom and strong men in strength or rich men in wealth, that caught me as a young man, that the greatest knowledge that I could possess would be the knowledge of God.

And so I began to study who is God? I mean, who is he really? What does the Bible say about him? And then, of course, with a correct hermeneutic, taking my conclusions that I had drawn out of the scripture and then go back into church history and find out, does anyone agree with me?

And to find that I had an affinity with the early Baptists, the early Presbyterian, with the Spurgeons and Martin Lloyd-Jones and Tozer and the Puritans and the Reformers. And to be able to study the scripture and have the spirit of God work through the scriptures to give me a high view of God, but to have that high view of God affirmed in these men who almost everyone recognizes were men of God.

And that's a rather confusing thing to me. I'll hear so many people talk about Tozer, talk about Martin Lloyd-Jones, talk about Spurgeons, say that they were gifts of God to the church, but then look at their preaching and look at their their ministry and realize everything they're doing contradicts these men.

You see, and so here's another thing that is very, very important that that I think is extremely important. I was a vile, vile sinner. I was a shameless. I was I was horrid. The fact that I'm saved at all is astounding to me.

I don't know what to do about that. So when someone comes to me and says they want to talk to me about something other than the gospel or self-realization or or all these other peripheral things, I'm to be honest with I don't care.

I don't care. I get I get to know God. Christ shed his own blood for my soul. So all these other things are just they're not just peripheral. I just don't care. You see, and I think in one way it's a gift that that I was such a scoundrel.

You know, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. You see, and so let me give you an example of what would really focus people, what would really focus people on the right things.

And it's this. Let's say that you have a man and he's obsessed with getting the newest car that just came out. I mean, it's all he can think about. It's all he wants. He just wants this new fantastic car.

And then on his way to buy the car, he has to go by the doctor's office to have his yearly checkup. And he finds at that moment that he has a near fatal, possibly fatal disease that is going to kill him.

I can tell you something. Every passion for that car has totally died. It's gone. It's not even entering into his head. Why? Because of this thing that has come up that's eclipsed every other desire. He simply wants to live.

And I think that when preachers stop all their foolishness and begin to preach to men about the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, the great predicament of the sinner, that the sinner will stop just coming to church to get a better life or to have a loving community.

They will come there as a man fleeing from a fire. And then when they get there, all they'll want is the one who saved them. They won't want anything else. You see, it's why, you know, people will say to me, they go, you know, you've spent your whole life harping on just the same things over and over about who God is, about who we are and what Christ has done.

Don't you preach anything else? No. Because this is the core from which everything else is going to spring, you see. It's this. You know, a man dying is dazzled by the one who heals him. But then there's something different in Christianity.

The one who heals us, that revelation, that healing, that salvation, then all of a sudden he unfolds just a little bit more of himself and we're mesmerized. And then he unfolds a little bit more of himself.

And we begin to realize that what makes heaven heaven is the fact that we are going to be in an eternal pursuit of tracking down this God that is infinite. Every day, greater revelations of glory. Heaven's not heaven because you get to walk on streets of gold.

I mean, that'll bore you out of your mind after a few years. Heaven is heaven because we'll be tracking down the infinite glories of God in the person of Jesus Christ. And this is what preachers have to communicate.

This is our task. But if you're not a man saturated with these things, you can't communicate them to others. So all you're left with is teaching life principles as though you were a life coach or a motivational speaker.

And that's no longer a man of God. It's no longer.

A man of God. How do you personally use the Bible to grow an awareness of God's glory or to promote lofty views of God among the people around you? When I read the Bible, I recognize.

That it and this is not just semantics, although it is a revelation to me, it is primarily a revelation of God. The Bible is about God. It is about his story. It is about him making himself known. Now, this is extremely important because if I'm going in the Bible just to get certain principles, then I'm left to myself with principles that in my own strength, I can't even obey.

They can have no impact on my life. I need the God of those truths. And so when I go into scripture, I go into scripture to meet God, to meet God. Now, I'll tell you who was very helpful to me in this is my dear friend George Mueller, is that when he set about to determine what he was going to preach, he would read through the scriptures until till God met with him, until God warmed his heart.

And when I sit down and I'm looking at a text, of course, I want to know what other men have said. Of course, I want to understand the Greek or the Hebrew. I want to go to commentaries. I want to do all sorts of things, but I cannot preach that text unless it has impacted me.

What is it saying to me? What is it doing to me? How is it changing me? I have whenever I have whenever I'm kind of over a prayer meeting, I will always tell people this. Do not bring to this prayer meeting a prayer request that has not burdened you enough to pray for it.

Also, do not bring me a sermon that has not impacted your own life. You know, I can I can listen to a preacher preach. He may stumble all over the text, but if I know what he's sharing with me has done inward work in his life, I'm all ears.

I'm all ears. So another thing, and I know that it's just the way we say things. People will say, well, how how do you use the scriptures? Or as one young student told me one time, because I just want to master the scriptures.

And I said, young man, I said, I want the scriptures to master me. It's really not that complicated. All that you have to do is follow the scriptures. If you want to know what's important in the scriptures, you go to the scriptures and it will take you right to Jesus Christ.

Jesus told the Pharisees, he said, well, he told us all he said, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. But it are these that point to me that testify of me. So here's here's some other things that are very, very important.

God is a person. His greatest revelation is in the person of Jesus Christ. When I go to the scriptures, I'm wanting to meet with a person. I'm wanting to hear a person. I'm wanting to commune with a person.

I'm not just wanting to grab a bunch of knowledge so I can preach in a conference. I want to meet with him. Another aspect of of being in the word and it be effective is is the idea of prayer, praying over the word, crying out over the word.

I knew a preacher who impacted me greatly when I was a young man. And someone told me this about him, that he went through the entire Bible. Taking each section and praying over it and weeping over it for hours at a time to meet with God in that passage.

You see, just because you've grasped something intellectually, just because you've you understand a certain doctrine doesn't mean that it's been imprinted on your soul that's impacted you. And that's the work of the Holy.

Spirit. What passes for the gospel in our day seems to have more in common with pop psychology and self-help books than the glory of Christ described in the scriptures. How do you see this.

As being linked to the low view of God? If I were to describe Western evangelism, which I am so sad to say, as I travel all over the world, has now been exported to almost every country in the world. If I were to describe Western evangelism, the word would be trite, possibly superficial.

It is a superficial view of God, a superficial view of man's ailment and therefore trite preaching, superficial preaching. Jeremiah said it well when he spoke about the false prophets who would say peace, peace, and there is no peace.

You see, we've got to understand that what's going on here is a matter of it's heaven, hell, eternal life, eternal death, the glories of God, the triumph of his kingdom. I mean, these are weighty matters.

These are the greatest matters. There's nothing more important than the gospel of Jesus Christ and communicating that gospel to men. And yet I will attend sometimes evangelistic meetings just to see what's going on.

And a lot of times it's 20 minutes, 15, 20 minutes of entertainment, and then all of a sudden the preacher gets serious for five minutes about something and then gives an invitation and spends his whole time trying to coax people to the front.

They are men who are utterly ignorant of even the most basic truths about God in the Christian ministry. Culture, psychology, manipulation, personality, celebrityism, all sorts of things are used now to advance the kingdom of heaven and it's all rot.

It's all rot. First of all, we go back to a high view of God. I remember being challenged one time to read through the entire Bible, write out every question I had. And I remember as a young man, when I made it through the first time, a serious study of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, I was trembling.

I'd kind of cut myself away from what culture said about God. I'd cut myself away from even what the Christianity that surrounded me said about God. And I just read the Bible and it caused me to tremble.

Such a, who is this God? Well, then that fear of the Lord began to then ask myself a question. Well, what am I like? And then to go into scripture and see that not what psychology would say, not what culture would say, and not what most preachers would say, but what does God say about my humanity and my fallenness?

And then what was actually done on Calvary to bring about my reconciliation, my pardon, my salvation. All those things are magnificent, but they're not merely magnificent. They're sacred. I don't know if it was Tozer or Vance Havner who talked about men who play marbles with the diamonds of God.

When I began to see God as he's revealed in the scriptures and I began to see what the Christ did for me, I realized I had to treat these things as sacred, serious issues. So it really does get back to everything we've said from the very beginning.

Your view of God will determine everything, how you preach, how you minister, how you go out and seek to establish a church, missions. Absolutely everything will be determined by your high view of God.

I fear for the men who preach the gospel, many of them in this country today. I fear for them because they cry out, peace, peace, when there is no peace, because they give a distorted view of who God truly is, because they don't understand the very cross that they're preaching, because they're calling people to do something in order to get some assurance of salvation that the scriptures do not call them to do.

No. One's view of God determines everything about everything.

Else.