WWUTT 255 The Authority of the Word of God?

There's a teacher out there, a pastor of one of the largest churches in America, who says that he believes the

Bible is the authoritative Word of God, but he won't use it to witness to unbelievers. So how authoritative does he think the

Bible really is when we understand the text? Many of the

Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the

Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty. Here's your teacher,

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everyone. Welcome to the final broadcast of when we understand the text, but don't panic and don't go anywhere.

We're still coming back on September 5th, as promised, but it's going to sound a little bit different.

The name is going to change. The music is going to change. What's not going to change is the Word of God. The Word of the

Lord remains forever. As it is said in first Peter 1 25, the way that I present the word is going to be the same.

In fact, we'll even follow the same pattern that we've been doing the last several weeks, a New Testament study on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, an

Old Testament book on Thursday and then Q and a on Friday, we'll still be doing that. However, we've got an opportunity to get this program on the radio.

There's going to be a local radio station that will be airing this. And for that reason, we can't just automatically assume that people have heard of when we understand the text.

So we're going to make the broadcast its own identity. And the program is going to be called

East from West. We've already got a website set up for this eastfromwest .org. In fact, you could go to that site, still find links to what videos you could go to www .utt

.com and still find the podcast there and links to East from West. All of that will be set up in that way to be interconnected.

But when we understand the text will remain the video ministry. And then East from West will be this broadcast ministry.

What videos will still pop up from time to time, but it's going to have its own identity.

And of course, the name being taken from Psalm 103, verse 12, where it says that God takes our sins, throws them as far as the east is from the west, and he remembers them no more.

And the tagline to the program is going to be seeing God's amazing grace through the teaching of his word.

The program will be exactly 26 minutes long. Of course, being on the radio means that we have certain time constraints that we have to follow, but that's all right.

I didn't fit the five minute thing very well. Then when we expanded out to 10 minutes, I even started stretching beyond that.

And we've got Bible devotionals every day that are over 20 minutes long as it stands. So all I have to do is make sure my open and close is tighter and we stay at 26 minutes.

So you don't have to change anything. If you're subscribed through iTunes, great. You'll still be getting the program as you've always gotten it.

Podbean, same way. I think the address on Podbean will change, but everything else will stay the same.

You just have to stay as you are. But when we come back on September the 5th, things will sound a little bit different and the program will be called

East from West. Thank you for your prayers and your continued support of this ministry as we go forward with kind of branching things out a little bit more than we already have.

I'm going to do something today that's a little bit different than what we do on Friday. Typically, we take questions from listeners.

I'm not going to take any questions today. I'm actually behind on questions. So it's going to give me an opportunity to go back to the email and respond to some questions

I haven't responded to in several weeks. I apologize for that. But you can still submit your questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

If you don't want it aired on the broadcast, you can say you just want it to be made private and I respond to questions that way as well.

So that's totally cool also. Here's what I want to do. Last night at the

E .R .L .C. convention, E .R .L .C. is the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the

Southern Baptist Convention. How do you like that for a name? Anyway, they've got their conference going on right now.

And last night there was a conversation between Dr. Russell Moore, who's the president of the E .R .L .C., and Andy Stanley, the founder and pastor of North Point Church in Atlanta.

I actually have a cousin who plays in the band of one of the North Point Church locations.

He and I have had our conversations about this. Believe me, I have said in the past that Andy Stanley is not to be an example to any pastor or anyone else should not be reading his books, watching his videos in terms of receiving good

Bible teaching, because the things that he says are just particularly troubling. And I've never been more sure of that statement than I was last night, watching this conversation with Dr.

Moore. Now, Dr. Moore was very gracious. He did not let Stanley off the hook. There was even a point where Stanley said that he felt like Dr.

Moore's questions were pretty tough on him. I probably would have been a little harder on Stanley than Dr.

Moore was, but I won't claim to know how to do Dr. Moore's job better than he does. Let me set up this first clip here.

So Dr. Moore and Stanley had been talking about the way that Stanley does church, and he kind of has this seeker friendly approach.

So that's what the conversation was basically about. Dr. Moore is firm on preaching the gospel to those who know

Christ and those who don't. It's still preaching the word of God. It is the authority of the word of God, whereas Stanley is taking this position of you've got to make it palatable.

You have to make it in such a way that a person who is an unbeliever would want to hear it and want to receive it.

And so then that led to this question from Dr. Moore. You would not feel comfortable saying to an unchurched person, this is what

God says. Thus says the Lord. If I'm trying to win them to Christ, you're saying?

I wouldn't start there. But would you ever get there? Well, yeah, once they have taken steps toward understanding what those words even mean.

Okay. Now, when you're talking about... We accommodate the people's capacity. We all do that.

So that's all I'm saying, based on the prejudices and the misinformation about the

Bible. I think probably the difference that we would have here is I think everybody is trying to hide from the voice of God consistently.

And we're all... Yes, men are not friends of the light. They're friends of the darkness. That's right. And so the shrinking back from the open proclamation of the truth, this is what the scriptures say.

We believe in the authority of Scripture. You may not. No, I do absolutely believe it. No, I'm not saying you may not. I'm just saying you may not.

See, that's how rumors get started right there. You're talking to the person. You may not.

You may not talk to that person over here, except the authorities. Gotcha. But we do. But consider the claims that are being made.

And what I'm saying to you is this is what God says. I think that's where our difference here.

So Stanley, according to Stanley, he's not going to use the word of God until a person begins to understand it, which is funny because I teach

Christians who don't understand it. So where's the line? I mean, at what point does a person get to being able to understand the word of God and now we have permission to use it?

See, the problem with this approach is that Stanley is letting the hearer determine the narrative and is actually letting the hearer have authority over the word of God rather than letting the word of God have authority over the hearer.

There is no need to bring a person to any kind of understanding first before we can give them the word of God, because the word of God tells us that everybody inherently knows that God is real and his word is true.

Romans 1 verses 18 through 20 for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. So not only does a person know that God is real, they know he is eternal and he is divine.

His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived in all that has been made.

Furthermore, since we know that there is an ultimate law giver, we know that the law that he gives is true and anyone who breaks that law deserves to die.

We all know that. And Romans 1 goes on to tell us that in verse 32, though they know

God's righteous decree that those who practice such lawlessness deserve to die.

They not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. They know God's righteous decree.

We know that God has spoken now. Not everybody inherently knows what God has spoken, but we know that God has spoken and the law that he has given, if anybody breaks that law, they deserve to die.

We see in Romans chapter three, verse 19. We know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

By what? The declaration of the law. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

So we need to use the word of God. We need to speak the word of God to even unbelievers that they would be knowledgeable of their sin and knowledgeable of the holiness of God and their need for a savior that will bridge that gap and bring them back into right standing with God.

Because as it says in Romans 3, 23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift, not justified by works of the law, but justified by Christ.

The apostle Paul told Timothy that you use the law to bring an ungodly person to a knowledge of their sin.

First Timothy 1, 8. Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and the sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.

In accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

So you use the law to bring a person to a knowledge of their sin. You use the word of God and the authority of that word that a person may know their sin that they're fallen from God's holy and righteous and perfect standard, and they need a savior to bring them back into a right relationship with God.

And so if you've ever watched Ray Comfort's video, you've seen examples of this. And when I go out, I evangelize in the community.

I use a combination of Comfort's method, which is referred to as the way of the master and the Romans road. And I'll just break right into it.

Walking up to a person on the sidewalk and say, Hey, do you mind if I ask you a few questions? Well, sure. If you were to die today, would you go to heaven or hell?

And more often than not, you know, and I never have to explain what heaven and hell are like people understand the concept of heaven and hell, whether or not they believe in heaven or hell.

And so a person might say, well, I think I'm going to heaven. Well, why would you do that? Well, because I think I'm generally a good person.

So I'll say, okay, do you mind if I test you on that a little bit? And they'll say, sure. Have you ever told a lie before? Right away.

We've we've hit a roadblock. Well, sure. Yeah. But you know, everybody tells lies.

What does that make you? If you've told a lie makes me a liar, you know, have you ever stolen anything before?

Have you ever murdered anyone before? And they'll say, no, no, no. I've never killed anybody. And I'll say, well,

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter five, if you've even had hatred in your heart for somebody, if you called them names before, then you have murdered them in your heart.

So are you in violation of that command? You've ever hated somebody that way before? Well, yeah, I have.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, if you've looked at somebody with lust in your heart that you've committed adultery with them in your heart, have you ever committed adultery before?

And they'll say, yes. Have you ever blasphemed the name of God? And sometimes when I ask that question, they'll do it right there on the spot.

So I'll say, OK, just right now, we've gone through five commandments and you've acknowledged that you've violated all five.

You are a lying, thieving, murderous, adulterous, blasphemer. And so if you were to appear before God today, the judge of the entire universe, based on that perfect standard, just those five commandments, is he going to let you into heaven or hell?

And they understand, like almost every single time, unless they want to break out and kind of rabbit trail into some kind of argument, they'll say, well,

I mean, based on that, I guess I would be going to hell. So I have brought a person to a knowledge of their sin using the word of God.

It is always the word of God. Everybody is under the authority of the word of God, whether they will say that they believe it or not.

And you don't let an unbeliever control the narrative as if to say that they have authority over God's word.

God's word has authority over them. And it doesn't matter if they understand it or not. You have to use the word of God in order to even communicate the gospel.

And everybody needs to hear the gospel. It is the message of God.

And Romans 1 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. Dr. Moore was pretty gracious with Andy Stanley, but I would say that I don't think

Stanley really believes the gospel has that kind of power. Whether or not he's ashamed of it,

I don't think Stanley should be a pastor and is definitely not somebody or not an example that any other pastor should be following.

This next clip does not have a setup. It's just a clip from Andy Stanley, and then we'll talk about it here at the end.

In the United States, not everywhere in the world, but in the United States, following Jesus will make your life better and it will make you better at life.

I'm just telling you, you don't have to follow because you're walking away from all the stuff that you'll have to walk away from if you follow Jesus. I know you're hanging on like crazy, but let's be honest.

Come on. Come on. You have regrets. You have regrets. How many of you wish you could go back five years and undo some things that you've done?

I promise you, if you were to come up here and tell me what they are, I could show you or Jesus would have warned you not to do it in the first place.

Isn't it true? Don't you wish you hadn't? Did you know if you had been following Jesus five years ago, you would not have those regrets?

I want to invite you to follow Jesus, to avoid the regrets that you may create by not following him.

And this isn't self -improvement. This is about surrender to Jesus Christ, a risen savior as your

Lord, and it'll make your life better and richer. Okay, except that is self -improvement.

Like he tries to qualify it by saying, I'm not talking about self -improvement. Yeah, that's exactly what you're talking about.

It's a self -improvement plan. Okay. So in John 10, 10, Jesus says, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. And I do believe that when we're talking about an abundant life here, we're not just talking about the life in the hereafter, although we are talking about that.

That is what Jesus is talking about. But we're also talking about meaning and purpose in the present life.

Whereas previously there were things that made no sense and had no meaning and no purpose with Christ.

There's a purpose to it. Like, why do you go to your job? What's the point of your job to make a paycheck so that I can keep on living?

Right. But when you read Colossians three, you read that you work first for the Lord Christ and not for men.

So then you do your job to the glory of God. And even your job has eternal significance.

When you're sitting around the dinner table with family and you're laughing and telling jokes and having a good time, it's a great moment.

Sure. But for those of us who are in Christ, who are looking forward to the wedding feast of the lamb, which we will all be partakers of in glory.

Then the dinner conversations that we have now sitting around a table laughing and eating and having fun is just like the smallest, tiniest little glimpse of what that's going to be like.

And it gives us an even greater hope for our future. It rolls up into praise to God.

God, thank you for this. All the glory goes to God. Thank you for this moment in this experience. All good things come from the

Lord. Whereas a person who does not know Christ, the experience or the pleasure rather terminates on the experience.

There's nothing to look forward to after the experience is over. Maybe you have a fun little memory, but that's it.

You can look forward to the next time if there's going to be a next time, if you don't get hit by a bus this afternoon.

But there's no purpose in anything unless you know that you give all things to the glory of God.

Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God, as Paul said to the Corinthians. And so everything rolls up into praise to God.

Everything has an eternal significance to it. And that's the abundant life. But what Andy Stanley is describing there is just simply self -improvement.

He's saying, follow Jesus so you won't have any regrets. Follow Jesus because life is actually better and it's actually easier.

And the personal plan that Jesus has put together for your life will make life easier to handle.

Then, you know, consider if you had a Christ five years ago and then you wouldn't have those personal regrets and whatnot.

The Bible is very clear that becoming a Christian is actually harder and more difficult than before you were saved.

Jesus says it very plainly in Matthew chapter seven, broad is the way that leads to destruction. And many are going to find that because that's the easy way.

But narrow is the road that leads to life. And few are going to find that way.

Long and hard is that road. Broad and easy is the road that goes to destruction.

And you know what? Unbelievers totally understand this. Like if you ever talked to an unbeliever before and they say,

I live my life with no regrets. Sure. You've encountered people like that all the time. So then you try to present to them the gospel of Jesus Christ and convince them that life would be easier with Jesus than the way they have things now.

They'll laugh in your face. They're with their sin. They would rather have their sin than give those things up to follow

Christ, which they can identify would be a more difficult road than the road that they're on right now.

And if you are able to convince a person to turn from their worldliness and believe in Jesus, you'll create a disingenuous believer because they're only in it for themselves.

They're only doing this because they get something out of it. Well, Andy Stanley said, I can have my best life now.

Yeah, it's the exact same shtick that Joel Esteen has been pitching.

Nobody gets into heaven seeking their own glory. We get into heaven proclaiming

God's glory. And though we had sinned and fallen short of his glory, he loved us so much that he sent his son

Jesus to die on the cross for our sins so that all who believe in him will have eternal life.

If we have right standing with God, God looks at us and he sees not our sins, but the righteousness of Christ, because we've been justified by his grace as a gift.

And you only know this because you heard the word of God proclaimed to you.

Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

And because you've repented of your sins and you've become a follower of Jesus and you will live forever in his kingdom with him, you've become a fellow heir of the kingdom of God, which is much better than believing that you can have your best life now.

All right. This last clip here is Dr. Moore presenting a hypothetical question with Andy Stanley.

So here's how he sets this up. A couple years ago, I guess some reporter referred to me as an evangelical

Pope, which made my Catholic grandmother happy. But I kind of said, you really don't understand how evangelicalism works.

And part of me was kind of pridefully saying, I don't want responsibility for that. You know, if I were

Pope, I would kind of hope things would be different. If you were real, the evangelical

Pope, and you really had the authority to say, this is how it's going to be within American evangelical

Christianity, what would you do? I would have all the churches that are dying, dying, dying, dying, dying, sell their buildings and give the money to church planters.

I just made that up sitting here. That was pretty good though, wasn't it? I don't know. That wasn't on my list. I just know a lot of church planters here.

I mean, the misappropriation and the misused and unused real estate in this country just drives us all crazy because some of you're in a grocery store, you're in the back of a school and down the streets, you know, four and a half million dollars worth of property and eight people sitting in there anyway.

That's not on my list. Okay. Here's my short list. Going back to what we talked about earlier, I would ask preachers and pastors and student pastors in their communication to get the spotlight off the

Bible and back on the resurrection. Let's get people's attention back on Jesus as soon as possible, that the issue for us is always who is

Jesus, that he rise from the dead, and that we would leverage the authority we have in the resurrection as opposed to scripture.

Not because I don't believe scripture is inspired in terms of reaching this culture. We've already talked about that one. Okay. What Andy Stanley just said, and I'm excluding all the other comments that he makes after this is all other list of what he would do as an evangelical pope.

What he just said is borderline heresy. And I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And I'm going to be gracious when I say borderline, because he did talk about this earlier in the conversation.

I don't buy his explanation, but he did talk about it. But he did say earlier, even in the clips that we aired, that he believes that the

Bible is the authoritative word of God. So I'm going to give him some benefit, but not much. Because how do you even know about the resurrection if you don't have the

Bible? What's he going to explain the resurrection with? The Jewish Talmud, Josephus, Lucian of Samosata.

Do you even know who that is? And even if you use any of those extra biblical sources, you are not going to get the biblical explanation for Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection from the grave.

And then the things that are explained in the epistles as to what all of this means, how

Jesus fulfilled all of the law and the prophets. At the end of the book of Luke, Jesus says that he explained these things to his disciples and their eyes were open to understand the scriptures.

And so then the apostles give us that in the rest of the New Testament books where we have the explanation of how

Christ fulfilled all of these things and in him do we receive justification by faith. You don't even know any of that without the

Bible. And Andy Stanley wants to go into this whole, let's not look at the

Bible first, let's look at the resurrection first. How do you do that? How do you look at the resurrection of Christ first without the

Bible? It makes no sense, which is why I say it's borderline heresy because he's just contradicting himself.

Even though in his heart, he may believe, he may believe that the Bible is the authoritative word of God.

He sure doesn't act like it. One of the qualifications for a pastor that we have in Titus chapter one is that he hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught and be able to rebuke those who contradict it.

How will Andy Stanley do that if he doesn't even believe it should be spoken to unbelievers?

So this is once again why I say nobody should be following Andy Stanley's example and certainly no pastor.

He is out to entertain the world, not preach the word. He is a false teacher.

Let's pray real quickly here as we wrap these things up. God, I want to pray for men like Andy Stanley and I pray that he would repent of his false teaching and would submit to the authority of the word of God with such submissiveness that it's not just a personal thing to him, which is kind of what he makes it out to be, but that it is something that he wants to preach to everybody because he knows and understands according to what

God's word says that everybody is under the authority of this word. They need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and so be saved from their sins and we cannot do that without proclaiming the word of God.

And so may not only Stanley repent of his sin, but may there be many pastors who follow that kind of example that would repent of their sins and would preach the word of God.

Keep me faithful to preach this word soundly, not trying to entertain the world, but giving glory to God, which is first and foremost, my direction and my desire as a minister of the word, raise up other strong ministers who believe in the authority of God's word and proclaim that not trying to sound witty or smart or funny or be a comedian up on stage or any of these other things, but they are teachers of God's word, which has the power to save the soul from death into eternal life with God through Jesus Christ our

Lord. And it is in his name that we pray. Amen. Thank you so much for joining me for this program.

You can go back to and listen to old episodes while we do some transition here and we'll come back again on September the 5th.

I want to give some thanks to some programs out there that that have been gracious supporters of when we understand the text included among them, my good friends at Intreading Favor and the

Fire Away podcast, Landon Chapman and Nate Pickowitz. Thank you so much, guys.

Also, Andy Olson over at Echo Zoe and Wretched Radio, which really,

I mean, they kind of helped to get us out there. People would not even know who we were if it wasn't for the fact that Todd Friel and Wretched were grabbing our videos and playing them on the

Wretched program. The Wretched program is really funny to say, but that's the name of it. I'm sure Friel even thought about that when he named it what he did.

So thanks to Todd Friel and all those guys over at Wretched. Once again, our website www .utt

.com. I'll still have some new videos up even next week while I'm taking the time off of the program, but be back here

September the 5th. And don't forget the website eastfromwest .org. God bless.

Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .utt