Provoked in 2020

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00:01

Non -rockabotas must stop! I don't want to rock the boat, I want to sink it! Are you going to bark all day, little doggy?

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Or are you going to bite? We're being delusional. Delusional, yeah. Delusional is okay in your worldview.

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I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay.

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It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

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The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.

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Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

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When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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Now, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

01:34

Merry Christmas, everyone. Merry Christmas. This is a very fun show we have in store for us today.

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As you've probably noticed, I am not Pastor Jeff. He is waiting for a baby to be born.

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Paternity leave. Yeah, paternity. Almost. You're close.

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Yes, he's waiting. They're in the process of adopting a sweet little boy who should be born any moment.

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So they're waiting for that. But this is Luke the Bear. You all know me anyways. I'm very excited.

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This will be our last show for the year, for 1919. So I'm going to go ahead and say it now. We'll see you next year after the show.

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But I have two special guests with me today I'm very excited about. You all know Pastor Zach Morgan who's been on once or twice maybe.

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A couple times. Feliz Navidad. That's Merry Christmas in Spanish.

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Yes, it is. Thank you. What's it in Hawaiian? Mele Kalikimaka. You're close.

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Is the thing to say. Uh oh. And then we also have his sister.

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Beautiful sister. Desi Mays. What up? This is your first time on the show. It is.

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I'm excited. How are you feeling? Nervous? No, I feel good. Yeah, you're good. This guy over here though is a hot mess.

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Nervous wreck. I'm okay. Look at him. I'm good. He's sweating. I'm excited.

03:12

I wanted to have the two siblings on today because they are getting ready to start a new podcast.

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In 2020. I don't know if we have a date yet, but it'll be coming soon. We'll be doing here at Apollo GS Studios called

03:27

Provoked. Oh yeah. So why don't you tell us about that,

03:32

Zachary? Well, I don't know if it was my idea. I don't think it was my idea.

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I think it was your idea, right? I think that we were just kind of going back and forth.

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Just talking about our experiences in evangelism. We can talk for hours on this.

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I don't remember whose idea it was, if it was yours or mine. But it just kind of came to be.

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Yeah, I don't remember who necessarily brought it up first. But I guess the whole backstory is that there's so many idols out there.

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There's so many things that need to be exposed and educated about and torn down.

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So we were thinking about a podcast where we can really deal with the idols. Not necessarily just the broader idols within the culture, but actually the idols in the church.

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The idols that the Christian, God's covenant people worship. Because whenever God's people worship idols, it's bad for everybody.

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So goes the worship of God's people. So goes everything, the world. And so the state of the world, the state of the nation is really because of the false worship of God's people.

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And a lot of that is because of their idolatrous ideologies that kind of pervade the church.

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So we were thinking about how about we do a podcast that doesn't pull any punches at all.

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It just calls it as it is. And we begin to help the

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Christian church provoke them to tear down these idols. Because again, if God's people worship idols, it means everything goes bad or wrong.

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What does God do all throughout the scriptures? He responds in judgment when God's people worship idols.

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But when God's people begin to tear down those idols, really deal with them in their own hearts and their own lives, then everything begins to turn around.

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So I think what's so definitional about the kings of Israel was a good king would be a king who looks at the idols that pervaded the nation and he would destroy them.

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It was so definitional about what a good king was and who a bad, who a good king was and who a bad king was.

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And a bad king is somebody who would tolerate the idols within the nation of Israel. He wouldn't deal with them.

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He wouldn't tear them down. It would just be something that the people of God did. And he did it for political reasons.

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He did it for selfish reasons to promote his own kingship, whatever it may be. But what we see is that when, like in the case of Josiah, what

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Josiah did is they found the book of the law. They found the word of God. He brought that back up into public dissemination and the worship of God's people.

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And in tandem with bringing the word of God back to the worship of God's people, he destroyed all the idols.

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He didn't just leave some. He didn't do it in a segmented or a partial way. He destroyed and obliterated all the idols.

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And what followed that was revival for a generation in the nation of Israel. So anyway,

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I know I'm saying a lot there, but the whole premise of the show is to destroy cultural idols.

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What do you think, Des? Yeah. I mean, just in our experience, our church goes out to abortion mills.

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We go and just do public ministry a lot. And so a lot of what we hear is a lot of the most vigilant kickback we get, or you know what

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I mean, like people coming up against us and what we're doing is not from who you think you would be.

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It's not from atheists or feminists or, you know, whatever. It's from professing

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Christians. And so as you see that trend, you've got to ask why. What is happening? What's going on in the pulpits that's causing this?

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What are they being taught to make them believe that somehow sharing the truth about Jesus is an unloving thing?

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I mean, there's an idol right there. It's the idol of, you know, tolerance, the idol of man pleasing.

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And so really we just want to kind of look at each of these idols and kind of systematically break them down and expose them.

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Because like in Acts 17, you know, when Paul was provoked in his spirit to do that, we have to provoke each other to look at these things and really examine what's going on with the church.

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Why is public ministry such a rarity? Why is telling people about Jesus frowned upon amongst so many, you know?

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And it's all under the guise of love. Well, isn't the most loving thing to do is to tell the truth about Jesus?

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If you're saying you're a Christian, I mean, it's really insane when you think about it to tell another

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Christian that sharing the gospel is unloving. But we see it time. I mean, how many times have you heard that?

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Probably countless, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I want to get into Gideon and Judges 6 in a minute.

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But first, why don't you, for those that don't know much about you, Zach, why don't you explain what you do here at Apologia Church and why this podcast is important to you just from the aspect of where you're coming from and what you do here, if that makes sense.

08:49

Right. Well, I kind of enjoy it.

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I'm kind of the support pastor. I think my primary role is to come alongside the other elders and just love them and support them.

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I'm kind of a utility pastor in the sense that we all kind of wear... Swiss Army knife. We all wear different hats, right?

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Our responsibilities kind of bleed into the realm of one another. My role primarily is to be the pastor of local outreach.

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So I'm leading our Apologia Church Mesa Tempe into the field as far as abortion clinic ministry and just getting out there with the gospel.

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And that's where I like to be. I like to be in the field. I'm just kind of a soldier that wants to be out there doing my best to rescue babies and preach the gospel.

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So that's my role. I guess why this is a part of kind of the overall mission that God has given me.

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Early on, and I don't know if you feel this way, when you got into abortion clinic ministry, you got into biblical evangelism, which is simply going to the lost and preaching the gospel, like my sister was saying a couple of minutes ago.

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You get such a pushback from the people of God, right? You get out there and you get in front of the abortion clinic and you immediately see that the

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Christian church is absent. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're not there. Or the majority of the amount of people that come up to you when you're standing outside of an abortion clinic, you're preaching the gospel and you're pleading and you're sacrificing and you're dealing with all the hostility.

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It's the Christian church that comes and says, hey, this isn't very loving, like you were saying. This isn't very

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Christian. And so what is so, I guess, frustrating about that is the apathy, the indifference and just the stance, the

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Christian church at large. And so what we want to do in the podcast,

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I know much of this is going to be centered around the abortion issue and our work in the field at the abortion clinic, is we don't want to deal with the uninvolvement with the

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Christian church by attacking them. So when we were trying to come up with a name for Provoked and we were thinking about the tear down, right?

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Because Gideon, what he tore down, the idols of his father. Or we were thinking about the good fight. I think one of the titles was

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Smash Idols. Idol Smash. Idol Smash. And the sibling sidewalk idiots.

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So there's all these different names, but we don't want to come off as we are going to tear a certain individual down or tear our brothers and sisters in Christ down.

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And so that's what we have to be careful of. And when I started out in public evangelism and just going to the mill, I think

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I became like a bull in a china shop as far as just why aren't you out here? Speaking too harshly to my brothers and sisters in Christ.

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And that's not the way to go about it. What we're doing, what we want to provoke the church to do is to tear down the idols in their lives.

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But those are idols really of the heart. It's idolatrous ideologies that pervade the church.

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And what we want to do is be ruthless in the destruction of those type idols.

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It's not about tearing people down whatsoever. We want to stir each other up to good works, right? Right, that's what provoke means.

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To stimulate to action, to stir, to arouse you to do something.

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And so what are we saying? What do we want to provoke people to do? It's to deal with their own idols. Some of the synonyms of provoke here, provoke means to anger, to enrage, to exasperate, to stir up, like I said, to aggravate, to become enraged.

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And so when Paul saw all the idols in Athens, he was enraged. And it provoked him.

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The Spirit of God is that which provoked him. When he saw the idols, the Spirit of God gave him this righteous indignation, this aggravation in his spirit that caused him to do something.

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So what did he do? He immediately reasoned with the people who were worshiping the idols. And he said, well, actually, you're not worshiping a god here.

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This is not God. So what he did is he began to define what idols that they were worshiping. And then he confronted that with the power of the gospel.

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So it's educating people about idol worship that's in your life that people may not even be aware of.

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Because the thing about our culture and the idol worship that happens is it desensitizes people to the idols that they worship.

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That's exactly it. And I think in the book of Isaiah, it says when we worship idols, we become like the idols we worship, non -hearing, non -seeing.

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It nullifies our spiritual capabilities to where we don't even know we're doing it. So it's to kind of jar the church by calling it what it is so that they would go about destroying idols.

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There's a phrase I like to use. We become what we worship, and that's exactly what you're just saying.

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It applies to a lot of things, not just cultural idols like we're talking about, but even individual sins that people struggle with in their hearts.

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It's ultimately because they've placed something above Christ and those are idols, and they become what they worship.

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So Desi, I think you have a really awesome testimony. So why don't you talk about that and then just talk about how that comes into play with what you do on the streets, what you do with Zach, and how this comes into play with the podcast.

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Yeah, so I would say Zach and I grew up in a nominal

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Christian home. So Zach was saved first, actually. He was like 18, and he came to the

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Lord, and I'm like, that's cool for you. I would have said I'm a

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Christian too, but his life changed drastically. And then he went to school to be a pastor and got married and had some kids and started a church and asked my husband and I if we would join him and help him break down and set up, basically, because we were renting a space.

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Again, I would have told you that I was a Christian, but I was not a Christian. And so we kind of reluctantly started going because we were like, we don't really want to wake up early on Sundays.

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But we started going because I love my brother and I loved his wife, Jessica. And so we went and we started doing the setup and breakdown.

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It was more like a familial duty just because we were brother and sister. Yeah, absolutely. We've always been super close, all of us.

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So we started going, started going to their Bible studies, and they started just sharing the gospel with us and taking us through the scriptures.

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Okay, wait, stop right there. So you remember that one Bible study? Okay, explain it. That's what I was thinking right about. Okay, go ahead.

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So, I mean, if you watch your videos, you know, watch the apology

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YouTube videos of any liberal argument that comes up against us. I can't think of one that I hadn't said.

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Like, that was me. Every single thing was coming out of my mouth. So I would try to poke holes in the Bible. I would say all sorts of crazy things.

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And they patiently held our hands and, like, walked us through everything, explaining, being very patient and loving, but bold, you know.

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I mean, I remember being like, judge not. Like, what's coming out of my mouth, right?

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And so we... What if we got a nickel for every time we heard, judge not? Oof, we'd be...

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We'd be billionaires. Wow, that's a lot of nickels. That's pretty accurate, though.

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A millionaires, probably. So anyways, so we just kept going because of the grace of God.

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And I feel like my husband was saved first. I started to see a change in him. And I don't have, like, a day that I remember

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I was saved, but I do remember sitting in church one day and Zach was preaching and I just felt the fear of the

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Lord come over me. And I was like, I'm a sinner.

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I need Jesus. And it was just a feeling I had never felt before because, like I said,

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I professed to know Christ with my lips, but man, my heart was far, far from him.

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And so by God's grace, he saved us through the preaching of the gospel and through faithful Christians walking us through biblical truths and reasoning with us and not, you know, not being...

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just dismissing us and being like they're a lost cause. Because, I mean, if I was looking in on my life and my attitude,

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I'm stubborn. My husband's stubborn, too. We are stubborn people. And if I was on the outside, I don't know.

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I would hope that I would be as patient as they are, but I would say, I don't know if those two would ever come to the

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Lord. You know, it seems like a hopeless cause in human view, but God, he's so merciful to save us.

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So anyways, so we were baby Christians. We were going to church and Zach started just talking to us about evangelism.

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And here's another funny little fact. I remember the friends I was hanging out with at the time, they knew that I had said

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I was a Christian, but all of a sudden I started going to church and I started to love the things that God loves.

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And, you know, my views started to change a little bit. And I remember one of them telling me like, oh, you're a church goer now.

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And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, but we're just normal. You know, I'm not like, I'm not like an evangelist or something.

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That's like weird. And then later on, God would totally give us a burden for that.

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And so. Yeah, she was at a Bible study. I think I know what you're going to say early on.

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And the topic, well, we would just, we would be talking about, I don't even know what we'd be talking about. We'd be talking about Moses or something.

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And Desi would be like, hey, what do you think about abortion? So Desi is always bold and forthright. So she would always come up with these controversial questions.

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And I would just simply just try to explain it biblically as biblically as I can. And she told me one day, she said, I will never ever tell my kids.

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And I didn't even have any kids. You're like, dude, I'm never going to ever tell my kids that abortion is wrong or abortion is sinful.

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I'm never, ever going to tell my kids. But that's not how she said that, right? She was not that gracious? She was just bold about it.

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She was pretty bold. I think I remember saying that about abortion. And homosexuality. Yes. I will never teach my child that.

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That is unloving. I remember your in -laws, too, were there.

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And they were also very patient with taking us through the scriptures, too, and being patient with me.

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I would say things like, you know, they would talk about hell. And I'd be like, whoa, we don't know what happens at the last minute.

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You know, I would just have all these things. We can't tell people they're going to go to hell. Who are we? And they were also very, very patient in being like, well, actually, this is what the

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Word of God says. I'm just thankful for Christians who were patient with me and for God giving me the gospel.

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And so, obviously, he gave us new hearts, but he also transformed our marriage.

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I mean, he totally just redeemed us. And so, me and my husband,

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Don, we just really just got a burden for sharing the gospel, and we want to see other people saved.

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We want to see their lives restored. We want to see their marriages restored. We want to see their families restored and how that affects everything.

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And so that's what I want to do for the rest of my life is just tell people about Jesus. And so,

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Zach, just kind of going back, Zach kind of held our hands and told us, showed us evangelism, just going to the trolleys in San Diego.

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And I started off just kind of watching and listening, and they would preach, and I would have one -on -one conversations.

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And I remember the first time we went to Planned Parenthood, he had been going for a while, and I was like...

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Tell them about that. I was like, you know what? No, this is the first time. The first time, I think

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I know what you're talking about, but the first time I went with you, I just stood there with a sign, and I white -knuckled it and was shaking while you were just pleading for people.

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But then not... A week ago. Then you got the fire that you get when you first go, the passion.

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I don't know if it was a week, but I was dumb. I didn't know what I was doing, but I just got this bravery or stupidity.

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And I just walked right into the Planned Parenthood, and he's like, what are you doing? So this

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Planned Parenthood, logistically, was set up really cool. So there's this parking lot in the back, right? And the people have to walk all the way down this corridor, walk directly in front of you, and go around this rail to go to the door.

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So every time somebody goes into Planned Parenthood, they have to walk down, face you as the preacher and the pleader, and then walk down.

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Is that the one that's right off the 8th? Yeah. By Hotel Circle? Oh, yeah, that's it. Grape Street.

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So I'm there, and Desi's second time, and she's going. I think it was more than that. I think

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I had gone a couple times. Okay, so a couple times. Maybe less than five or something like that. So I like bend down to get a sign, and all of a sudden

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I see my red -headed little tiny sister walking up the ramp to go inside of Planned Parenthood.

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I didn't know at this time about trespassing and all that. Yeah, I'm like, you are going to be arrested.

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And so she walks to the door, and then what do you do? Okay, so in my mind, I'm thinking, well, they don't know if I'm here to get services, in quotes, you know, or not.

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And so I walked in, and I just was like, I don't even remember what I said. Oh, I was like,

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I want to see if I can get a pregnancy test, and they were like, okay, and I'm like, and if…

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It's embarrassing. I'm like, if I'm pregnant, can I murder it? And they're like, get out.

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And then you were talking to the ladies, right? And then you started talking to the ladies when you left? Yeah, I was like, get out of here.

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They're wicked. But yeah, I can't believe I didn't get arrested. Yeah, that was crazy. So what you guys can't tell from this is

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Desi's about four feet tall. What are you, about 6 '2"? 6 '1". I'm 5 '2".

23:04

Thank you very much. Okay, so you seem like you're four feet tall to me. But that'd be a funny sight, seeing those tiny little…

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When Zach says tiny little sister, he wasn't exaggerating. And you are fiery in a good way.

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Yeah, she's bold. That's hilarious. So yeah, so I think it's…

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I'm just sitting here listening, and I think even you coming to Christ was because Zach graciously and biblically provoked you.

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Right. In our parents. It's like our whole family. The Lord was so gracious.

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He used Zach to save our family, and he got to baptize us in my dad's pool.

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And it's just… That's just the power of the gospel. I mean, it was nothing special. I wasn't trying to cram it down your guys' throats.

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It was just answering questions. Cram! Week by week, just preaching the gospel and trying to be an example.

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So yeah, praise God. That's so awesome. Well, I'll tell you what. Before we… We're about at a good place to take a break here.

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We have a commercial break. So let's go ahead and do that, and then when we come back, let's get into talking about Judges 6 and old

24:12

Gideon for a minute. Sweet. So, yep. Thank you, everyone, again, for paying attention today and listening.

24:21

We're excited for this new show, and we will be back in about four minutes -ish.

24:26

So I'll see you on the other side. At the Ezra Institute, we are focused on training the current and next generation of Christians to lead in their families, churches, workplaces, schools, and every area of culture, and to do so with a full -strength confidence in the truth, beauty, and goodness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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25:07

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Systematic unbelief is being applied in every realm, seeking to destroy everything in its path, whether that be churches, families, individuals, or God -honoring institutions and traditions.

25:44

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28:24

Welcome back! Welcome back, welcome back. Special Christmas episode,

28:33

Apologia Radio. Got the Christmas jams going on today. So, if you are just tuning in and you missed the first half, we are talking with Pastor Zach Morgan and his wee sister,

28:47

Desi Mates, about their new show, Provoked, that they're going to be starting here in 2020. So, as promised,

28:54

I'm going to just get right into Judges 6 here, talking about Gideon.

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And I often use this passage a lot just because I feel like it really applies to the church and our culture, and it applies to us as Christians who are trying to be faithful and tear down cultural idols, right?

29:18

So, really, in Judges 6, what you have is the Israelites were being unfaithful. They were following after other gods.

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So, this is God's people that have abandoned God and replaced him with other idols.

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And I think, in many ways, the modern church has done that, at least in our culture, has done that considerably.

29:40

Absolutely. And if you haven't seen, they just dropped by what Standard Today Founders Ministry did, and it talks a lot about that.

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And it's really good, so you guys need to go see if you haven't seen it. Shout out to my boy, Chocolate Knox, for that film.

29:53

And also, please be praying for Tom Askle as well, who's behind Founders. If you didn't see that, he fell Sunday at church, passed out.

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Yeah, multiple facial fractures. He has a cervical injury, too, to his neck. Yeah, but he's already at home, which is crazy.

30:07

But please be praying for him as he recovers and they try to figure out what's going on. So, I love how, in this passage, basically, you have the

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Israelites are just whining and crying. Like, I don't understand why

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God's judging us. And a lot of times, I think the church does that a lot.

30:28

In our culture, we're like, I don't understand why there's gay mirage.

30:34

I don't understand why people are voting for abortion. I don't understand this and that. And it's like, well, it's because we, as a church, have not only allowed these idols to take precedence in our culture, but in some ways have even chased after them ourselves.

30:52

And like you guys mentioned earlier, you hear a lot of times, it's from the Christians that are like, you're not being loving. And it's like, no, you're just allowing this idol to exist.

31:01

Yeah, idol of comfort. Yeah, exactly. What it boils down to is idol of comfort. So, this is what's going on.

31:09

Israel's complaining. They're whining. And so, basically, the angel of the

31:14

Lord visits Gideon and tells him to tear down his father's idols.

31:20

And I love it because it's actually his own father. He's an altar to Baal and he has an asherah pole.

31:27

And the angel of the Lord is like, tear those down. And so,

31:32

Gideon does. He tears them down one night. And I love this little detail I love about it is he doesn't just demolish them.

31:43

He doesn't just tear them down and leave them. He actually rebuilds appropriate altars of worship to God.

31:50

And so, I always picture him actually taking those idols and using those same idols, but rebuilding them in a way that honors

32:02

God. And so, the result then is what? The neighbors come the next morning, see their altars have been torn down.

32:12

And they demand that Gideon's father hand Gideon over because they're going to kill him.

32:18

And, of course, his father protects him. And God protects Gideon just as he promised him.

32:23

He said, obey me and do as I say. I'll protect you. And he did. And I think a lot of times us as Christians in our culture just we're so fearful of the culture that we don't even trust

32:34

God that he's going to protect us when we are trying to tear down these idols. But it's the same thing.

32:40

You're talking about abortion and homosexuality, all this stuff. Those are like the two big cultural idols.

32:46

And now we have this intersectionality and all that stuff. And so, we as faithful Christians are trying to tear those down.

32:54

And you're going to have the culture is going to want to kill you.

33:00

Right. And that's just the game. Right. You should expect that. But what's crazy, like you guys were saying, is it's not even so much the culture as it is people within the church, the

33:13

Christians that are making the biggest stink and giving us the hardest time. And so,

33:20

I know you were going to kind of talk about some of that. Yeah, I think that's awesome. I think what

33:25

Gideon, we saw Gideon do was fully or as much as he could demolish the idols. So, it wasn't just a half -heartedness to it.

33:32

It was, no, this is wrong. This goes against God's first commandment. Right.

33:37

And then like Isaac was talking about yesterday, all the other commandments that God has given us, if we break the first one, we break them all.

33:45

Right. If we replace God on the throne of our lives with an idol, it all falls apart like a house of cards.

33:50

But I think what you see in Gideon's life is the destruction and then the rebuilding. You see that in Acts chapter 17 too.

33:57

So, what Paul does is he's provoked in his spirit, angered in his spirit. He educates about the idols.

34:04

He shows the people that this is not a God, that this is not going to give you what you think it's going to give you.

34:11

That's a great deception of idolatry, thinking that somebody or something other than God is going to give you only that which

34:17

God can give you. You're worshiping that. Worship really means to be prostrate.

34:23

In the picture of it, I think a great picture of worship is the baby in the womb receiving from the mother through the umbilical cord that which only the mom can give the baby.

34:32

So, when we worship an idol, we're saying that idol is giving me the peace, whatever it may be, satisfaction, life, fulfillment that only

34:41

God can give you. That's why idolatry is so, it angers God because it's empty.

34:48

Right. So, if you have those children going to a place to receive nourishment and everything that they need from the father from a place that they can't get it, what's going to happen to those kids?

34:56

They're going to be malnourished and they're ultimately going to be destroyed. But I think what's important with Gideon is not only the tear down, but the rebuild.

35:03

Right. So, it's saying, take for instance, a cultural idol, which could be your husband.

35:10

You can have an idol. A wife can make in her husband an idol or the single woman that must get married and now she's making her prospective future husband an idol because it's only in a relationship with a husband that she can receive the peace and the satisfaction and the ultimate fulfillment.

35:27

She's receiving that. So, what you do is you expose that. No, that's an idol. Your husband is never going to give you the peace and the pleasure because the

35:36

Bible says it's in his presence is the fullness of joy. He's never going to give you what God can give you.

35:42

But let's look at the relationship that you have with your father from a biblical worldview. Right.

35:48

So, it's exposing this faulty, idolatrous view of whatever it may be. People worship their pets.

35:54

Right. Have you ever been walking on the street or driving down the car and you see a pet in a stroller and it has a full suit on and a

36:02

Rolex? And they worship pets. And that's what we do as Christians. And here's the big issue.

36:08

I'm going to worship these idols in my life and it robs me of the energy and the time that I need to go about the mission of God.

36:17

So, why isn't the church active generally and in a broader perspective when it comes to rescuing babies?

36:24

Because we're too busy worshiping these other things. Yeah. And that's why the church is so impotent in so many ways.

36:31

So, what I was going to ask you guys though, and I think it's a question that we need to answer, is it okay to be angry?

36:38

So, to provoke somebody is to make them enraged. But a lot of people say, oh man, you don't want to be angry.

36:44

God's not an angry God. God's not a God full of wrath. God's a God full of love,

36:50

Christian. And I just heard it a couple days at Camelback Family Planning because we were just telling this guy the truth.

36:55

He's like, you're not very loving and you're so angry. So, should we be angry as Christians?

37:04

Well, I think there's, excuse me and I'll let you say something too, Desi, but obviously there's such a thing as righteous anger.

37:10

Right. You know, Jesus on more than one occasion had showed public displays of righteous anger.

37:18

Like flipping the tables, you know, the money changers, chasing them out with a whip, you know.

37:25

I'd like to see you at the abortion mill going there and start chasing out the abortionists with a whip. Lord, please let that happen.

37:33

You know, but there's such a thing as righteous anger. But the point is that when you have righteous anger, it's controlled.

37:40

Right. And it's gracious and it's loving. But you can have the anger that should fuel us to some degree.

37:47

But that doesn't mean you act sinfully, you know. And yeah, so I think

37:54

I'll let you go ahead and answer that. Yeah. I mean, everything that you guys just said, just thinking about, you know, we just have to look at like Jesus and what he's the perfect example.

38:06

So was he ever using provocative language? Did he ever say anything that you think might provoke people, stir them up a little bit?

38:16

Or was he always Mr. Polite? Rogers. Yeah, exactly. In Matthew 25, he said, don't fear man, fear the one that can cast you into hell.

38:25

And so it's funny when you hear people say things like recently

38:31

I heard this. It was like, oh, you know, my friend isn't a Christian, but they act more

38:37

Christian than the Christians that I see. And I'm like, really? So they act more

38:43

Christian than, say, somebody who follows the man, the God that says, hey, unless you say that I am he, you're going to die in your sins.

38:54

Right. They act like him because he seems like I mean, can you imagine Jesus saying that today?

38:59

You know how that would be received? Or what about when he's talking about us being the salt of the earth and being the preservative?

39:05

And he says, you know, if salt loses its flavor, how are you going to re -season it?

39:11

It's really good for actually nothing but to be trampled underfoot. And so you look at the word of God and you see there is provocative language used.

39:21

You do see that there's emotion and passion behind the things that God loves and the things that God hates.

39:27

And so we do want to be careful, obviously, and to do everything in humility and patience.

39:32

And we don't we don't want to take away from the absolute importance of that. But it doesn't take away from the need to use a serrated edge either.

39:43

So that's exactly right. And what you just said, you know, he says, if we are not being those preservative agents like salt and light is, then you're good for nothing.

39:53

So how do you I guess how do you explain that better? You know, if you are not confronting the culture with the gospel intentionally, proactively, then you're good for nothing.

40:05

If you're not being salt and light, then you're good for nothing. Now, what do we can what can we do with that type of biblical statement?

40:11

Get offended. How dare you say that? And we do that as humans. We all do it because we want to be comfortable.

40:18

So what we do is we take God's word, his commands, his his mission that he has called us to be about.

40:24

And we redefine it based upon our comfort levels. Right. Well, how dare you say that to me that I'm worthless?

40:31

Well, you know, that's exactly what God says. But rather than take God's word and commands as a personal attack, let it provoke you.

40:39

Let it stir you up to action to say loving. Isn't that loving to show something?

40:45

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you you guys both brought that up because I was going to have this discussion here.

40:51

I saw someone commented and said Christians cannot take control of the culture because Christians are a minority in the world.

40:59

Gideon, that's. Yeah. I mean, that's just that's just respectfully. That's a silly argument to me.

41:06

I think probably the reason that it may feel like Christians are the minority in the world is because we've abandoned the culture completely.

41:16

And so they're talking about top down. Yeah. Cultural involvement, in fact, which we don't believe in.

41:21

Right. But that's but the problem is because Christians have stopped going from bottom up. Right. With the gospel.

41:28

And so talk about, you know, salt and light. So we're to be a light to the world, you know, sit in a hill, which we're not as a whole.

41:36

But then when it comes to the salt, it's it's not just a preservative, which is one thing we're trying to do is preserve the culture.

41:43

Right. But it also is it's for flavoring.

41:49

Right. And so the culture right now, it's a culture of death. It it worships death and comfort and blood sacrifice.

41:58

Right. So I've said that before. Basically, the taste of the culture right now is of blood.

42:04

It's that nasty iron taste when you get punched in the mouth like that's the flavoring of the culture right now.

42:11

Right. And it's because the church has stopped speaking into the culture.

42:17

We've stopped trying to make it salty and give it flavor. And so that's the taste of it now. It's the flavor that's left from it.

42:25

And that's, you know, going back to let's you're good for nothing now, except to be trampled on the ground. And, you know, and that's that's the way the culture looks at the church, because we've we've stopped trying to be something like.

42:35

Right. Yeah. I mean, especially involvement of men in the church as well. I mean, what do we what are we most inspired by as men?

42:45

Is it a feminine, limp wristed Malakoui? All right.

42:50

Does that really does that get you going as a man and really inspire you to to move forward into to what

42:55

God would have you to be? No, it's a it's just it's boldness. It's courage. You know, men follow courage.

43:01

The church needs the courageous example of the church being involved in the culture. And what we need is we need more angry people when you go out in front of an abortion mill and it doesn't enrage you.

43:13

That tiny little babies, just fragile, soft, beautiful things inside of their mothers when we're being torn apart or something wrong with you.

43:21

Now, we're not saying, again, to be angry and begin to send out there because I've done it.

43:26

I've done it. I've gone down that road. You know, that that abortion mill is a place where you can be overcome with evil.

43:32

We're not saying that, but we need more angry Christians because it was angry Christians that provoked

43:38

Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Right. It was it was it was angry

43:43

Christians that were fed up with slavery at that moment. And what did they do? They used their they went about the task of loving their neighbor.

43:52

That's it's all it is. It's so conceptually simple. Evangelism is so conceptually simple. All this is not, you know, rocket science.

43:58

Thank God, because I wouldn't be able to do it. But it's just simply what getting involved in saying

44:03

I'm going to do something about it. Evil, evil continues to move forward. More babies die.

44:10

When what do we do? We tolerate it and we turn an apathetic ear to it. Yeah.

44:15

And we, again, look at God's commands and we get personally offended by them without being provoked to action.

44:21

Right. And I think, you know, to kind of back up with what you were saying about, you know, limp wristed preachers.

44:28

And I think when we go out, we kind of see not kind of we do. We see the fruit of, you know, gospel less churches where there's the gospels not being preached.

44:39

People are not being exhorted. You know, you see like a gospel light where they'll do like four steps to be the

44:45

David to overcome, you know, whatever. And they're not getting the gospel. So you've got like I think

44:51

I believe two scenarios going on. You've got the unconverted within the church and then you've got the elect that are there, but they're not being fed.

45:00

They're not being nourished. And so they come out and they have this worldview that looks exactly like the culture.

45:05

And they're the ones that are coming out and coming up against us, because it's not only that they don't they don't have a gospel that's watered down in impotent to save, but it's impotent to deliver people from sin.

45:18

And so they'll say things like, well, we can't we can't address homosexuality because we just need to love people where they're at.

45:24

And I'm like, Jesus died for sinners so that they would be set free from sin.

45:29

And so you see just the impotent nature of a lukewarm, watered down gospel.

45:35

And it permeates the culture and it permeates the way we educate our kids and when, you know, abortion and all of these things.

45:43

But thank God he is a God of redemption and he can use the people of God. And so and we're not saying that everybody has to go out to the abortion clinics or whatever.

45:54

It can have different functions. Right. Yeah. Moms, I mean, some of the most bold people I know are moms who are homeschooling their kids right now and they're raising them up to learn about all these things and teaching them about what

46:06

God's word says. That's a super important mission field. And to kind of comment on what you're saying,

46:13

I think loving someone where they're at is telling them the truth.

46:18

Right. You know, and it's like you can if someone is is, you know, claiming to be a homosexual, like you can love them as a person.

46:28

But the loving thing to do is to tell them the truth and not accept the sin that they're trying to live up, the idol that they're trying to worship.

46:36

Right. Yeah. You think about it. We love people at the highest level by sharing the gospel with them.

46:41

I think the greatest lovers on the planet are people that would share the gospel. It could be a mom to her kids or whoever it may be, because we are dealing with the state of their soul.

46:51

We are dealing with that which is the most precious to them. And that's not temporal needs.

46:56

That's eternal needs. So when somebody says, you know, so on Tuesday we were at Camelback Family Planning. We were pleading with a father there who brought his acquaintance in because he was having sex with her and she's married with kids.

47:11

So she's happily married. This is an adulterous relationship and they want to keep it under wraps. So he said,

47:16

I got to kill the baby. And he said, he said, you guys aren't being very loving out here in the way that you're explaining it.

47:23

It's so funny how a guy that's about to kill his baby is somehow taking the moral high ground and judging us for having a lack of morals or ethics in the way that we're communicating truth.

47:35

But that's to be expected from people who are dead in their sense. They're dead.

47:41

But when we, again, go about the task of simply going to the lost and sharing the gospel, you are loving them just by the communication of the truth.

47:49

Now, can we speak the love? Can we speak love in an abusive way? Of course. That's why the

47:54

Bible says speak the truth in love. So it does matter how we communicate the truth of the gospel.

48:00

But to say that you're, I mean, not loving by sharing the gospels and absolutely, it's crazy.

48:07

I think this brings up a good discussion. We could probably end on this. Let's talk about cowards, cowardice.

48:17

This is something we talk about a lot here internally. And I think this is something, I think honestly, this could be one of the idols we're talking about.

48:26

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, within the church, it's a big problem within the church, men and women.

48:33

But I would say it starts with the men being cowards, starts in the pulpits, pastors being cowards.

48:39

But this is something I know you encounter a lot at the mill, even when you're trying to save babies. Right. You have this discussion quite often.

48:47

So bring us into that discussion. Yeah. And I'll go back and forth with you, Des. Yeah. So when you, if you go out to the mill with us, you'll hear that term coward a lot because we're dealing with men that are actually paying someone to kill their own offspring.

49:02

And that's the height of cowardice. Right. So the definition of a coward is somebody who knows the right thing to do, but fails to do it, not only based upon fear, but based upon selfish means.

49:14

I mean, it's in the role of the man to protect women and children. So, you know, you guys at the abortion clinic would say, hey, you don't have the anatomy of a woman.

49:22

So you have no say in this, which is just another absolutely stupid abortion argument. They're all just devoid of any rationale or logic, just stupid.

49:31

There's no pro -abortion argument that holds any type of weight logically or rationally.

49:37

But if you go out there, we'll call out to the husbands and we'll call out the boyfriends as they're ushering the women in and we'll say, sir, don't be a coward.

49:46

Don't be a coward. For people out there, and I've had people say, whoa, that took me aback. And because the worst thing that you can possibly be called is a coward.

49:55

You could call me any name in the book, and we've been called every name in the book, even weird names, like really weird names.

50:01

We've been flipped off thousands of times. We could have a show just on that. Yeah, just the weird, weird stuff that happens, weird names.

50:07

But when you call a man a coward, that cuts to the heart. And the reason, because it's not as if I'm better than these men.

50:14

Believe me, we don't go out there professing any type of sinless perfectionism. And I don't say that to personally harm them or attack them, because we're actually trying to save the babies from the ones that are truly harming them.

50:25

But we're saying, look, this is the way God sees you. In the book of Revelation, it says cowards will have their place in the lake of fire, and they're at the top of the list.

50:34

So we say, brother, we are showing you how God sees you out here. The classification for your life, your identity before the living

50:43

God right now, in this act, is that of a coward. And you want us to make you aware that you're a coward, because on the day of judgment, you don't want him to say, coward.

50:53

Depart from me, you worker of iniquity. So it's an exposure of how

50:59

God is seeing him, so by God's grace, he would turn from that. But we can get into the reasons why men are cowards, and I think you hit on that.

51:06

Yeah, and also just seeing the fruit of what

51:11

I would call the prosperity gospel. And I know we want to do a whole show about this, but just to kind of touch on it, it's not only annoying when we hear things like, you've got to live your best life now, and unbiblical, obviously, and kind of funny to laugh at in some ways.

51:30

Like, I love me a good reformed thug life video of Osteen. But then when you see people coming to the mills that are professing

51:38

Christians, saying things like, I need to have my best life now, and then killing their child because they truly believe that.

51:45

They believe that Jesus would want them to have their best life now at the expense of their child's life.

51:52

They're not being told that this is a call for you to lay down your life and die and be resurrected again with Christ.

52:00

And so it's actually quite cruel. And then, you know, what about, you know, prosperity teachers saying that God wants us to all be free of trouble and pain.

52:09

Healthy, wealthy, and wise. Right. What happens when this person that thinks that they're a

52:14

Christian really has no concept of the actual gospel, of the actual word of God?

52:20

And what happens when death comes? What happens when cancer comes? They're crushed because they're sitting here going, you know what,

52:28

I tithe and I go to church sometimes and I'm a good person, right, God? Why are you sending me this affliction?

52:35

Because they've been fed this disgusting lie that's actually so cruel.

52:41

So that is, I think that would be like the definition of hate, right? They tell us we're being hateful by going out and, you know, calling people to save their babies, not to kill their babies, and calling them to faith and repentance in Christ.

52:53

But I can't think of anything more hateful than that. Yeah, and so what you're saying, it's a problem that flows out of the pulpit.

52:59

Right. So it's, and like Pastor Toby said, everything flows out of the sanctuary. Yeah. Into the culture.

53:05

So it's the worship of God's people, the false worship of God's people, but it's also the negligence of the pastors.

53:14

And we're pastors. Not does he. Oh yeah. No. No lady pastors around here.

53:21

Yeah, so we don't want to attack our brothers. I mean, we hold that office and it's a sacred office.

53:29

But it flows out of the pulpit, and that flows out of a pastor's understanding of his own duties.

53:36

You know, we unfortunately live in a kind of a national climate in the broader American evangelical church where a pastor thinks that, you know, he's supposed to be a professional lecturer.

53:46

You know, so it's a different definition of what it means to be a man of God. And really the authority or the blueprint that the men of God are looking to is not the word of God.

53:57

It's just the American evangelical understanding of that, which is pulled out of, you know, you got to be an entrepreneur, you got to be a

54:05

CEO, you got to be a comedian. Yeah. You know, you have to be an entertainer of man. And so you replace

54:10

God's expectations for you as a pastor with these other alternate expectations that are not biblical.

54:17

You know, so it's not about being a professional lecturer, right?

54:22

The end all of sanctification, the end all of being a pastor is not some academic elitism that a lot of pastors believe it is.

54:31

So we're getting down to the root of the issue. Why is it flowing out of the pulpit? Because they don't understand

54:36

God's duties or they're neglecting God's duties. Now, it's just simple. What makes a pastor?

54:42

A pastor is someone who's teaching the word of God and by his own example, living that in front of his people.

54:48

Like 1 Thessalonians 2a, Paul said, we're sharing not only the word but our lives with you. So we are firmly convicted that in order for the church to really get into the field as far as evangelism, saving babies, whatever it may be, we as pastors, we have to lead from the front.

55:05

We have to be at the bullet catching pastors and it stinks and it's hard and it's challenging and it's tough, it's rewarding, but that's got to happen.

55:15

We are the ones that go out, like Paul told Timothy, do the work, Pastor Paul told

55:20

Pastor Timothy, do the work of the evangelist. But unfortunately, in the broader

55:25

American Evangelical Church, we're thinking, no, I'm not the evangelist. I have not been given the gift of evangelism.

55:31

How many times have we heard that? But as a pastor, we cannot walk through that door because that's just part of our calling as well as other things.

55:41

Yeah, I mean, a pastor is a shepherd, literally. That's the word. We're shepherding our flocks.

55:46

Yeah, we're leading them. Exactly, and I've talked about this a lot. Even like real life shepherds, like when

55:53

Christ says, I am the door to the sheepfold, that's what a shepherd was. They slept in the doorway into their fold and they protected their flock.

56:03

So everything went through them and they led by example. When they went out into the field, the pastor was at the front leading the flock.

56:11

I think what you see now is... Yeah, they hear his voice and they follow him. Yeah. Jesus even talked about this.

56:19

Basically, a lot of pastors now are just hirelings. They just show up on Sunday and they teach and then they don't have any knowledge of what's going on in their flock.

56:29

They just let the flock out to do whatever they want during the week. And then after the flock's out, then the pastor's maybe having a golf game or something, his weekly golf game.

56:39

Yeah, and so... They have no idea what's going on. They're not leading. They're just showing up on Sundays. Right, and so they're studying and that's good.

56:46

They're studying the scriptures. That's even questionable. Yeah, that's true. They're agonizing over the scriptures and that's something that we have to do.

56:52

Yeah. And maybe they're golfing and they're having some leisure time and rest. We need that too. So I think it's not necessarily demonizing those practices, but it's a truncated view of what it means to be a pastor.

57:04

So they're doing those things that we all need to do, but it's to the absence of all these other qualities and duties that we got to fulfill as pastors or we're not doing our job.

57:16

Yeah, no, that's a good one. I'm not saying pastors can't have a weekly golf game, but if that's your priority and you'd have no idea what's going on with your flock and you have no involvement with your flock, you're not leading.

57:27

Then there's a problem. Right, you're doing that to the neglect of the other things you got to be doing. Exactly. Well, I think this was good.

57:37

Yeah. That was fun. This was good practice for you guys. It is. Yeah. I thought we were going to be giggling too much, so I'm glad that didn't happen.

57:44

That'll happen later. Yeah, these two are funny and they think a lot alike and so you guys will enjoy this show, especially when they start getting in giggly moods.

57:55

Yeah. I think just the main thrust of our show is to provoke the church.

58:01

We want to serve the church. That's always been my greatest passion is just serving the church and helping the church because the church is the answer.

58:11

Yeah. The church is the answer. The church has always been the answer as far as defeating cultural giants and dealing with cultural ills and abominations like slavery in the past and we have abortion now.

58:25

The answer, it's not going to be a federal solution that solves the issue. It's not top -down change.

58:30

It's bottom -up change that begins with the people of God fulfilling their evangelistic duties and love, sharing the true gospel and that's all that we want to do is to provoke people to do that.

58:42

Amen. Yep, you're absolutely right. It has to be the church. It has to be through the proclamation of the gospel and it'll never come through legislated laws because politics is legislated morality and so as long as the morality of the people is not the morality of God, the legislation is going to match that morality.

59:04

And so it has to be the gospel. There has to be true heart change, bottom -up. Amen. So let's strive for that in 2020, eh?

59:14

Amen. Amen to that. All right, well once again, thank you so much everyone for listening.

59:21

Thank you to all of our All Access subscribers. As always, we say this and we mean it.

59:27

You make all this happen. You put the lights on. You make it possible for us to do what we're doing and so we're excited.

59:36

We got a lot coming up, excuse me, in 2020. We already are booked through like April right now with stuff.

59:44

We got exciting stuff coming up so be watching for that. Be watching for stuff from An Abortion Now.

59:51

We got some exciting stuff this year with that as well. We should be making some announcements here in the next week or so with stuff going on with An Abortion Now.

59:59

So yes, thank you everyone. Thank you so much. Merry Christmas everyone. Thank you Pastor Zach. Merry Christmas.

01:00:09

Thank you. Thank you Desi. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Love you, dude. Merry Christmas Bedford Falls and Happy New Year to you in jail.

01:00:20

Go on home. They're waiting for you. Merry Christmas everyone. We'll see you next year.