10 Years of Beholding God | Paul Washer, pt 3

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for MediaGratia. Throughout 2023, we have released special episodes that are the complete interviews that we conducted for Rethinking God Biblically.

And those have been so fun to cut together, to work on and then to release and to see and hear how the

Lord has used them in your lives. And we have heard back from so many people that they have been encouraged and blessed and benefited.

And we're so incredibly grateful. This will be the last of those episodes. And so before I, before we get to it,

I just wanted to say thank you guys for listening. Thank you for watching. It truly is a blessing and a privilege to make these, to make all of the podcasts and to put them out.

So we pray that this week with Paul is a blessing to you. I think it is safe to say that Sunday morning in America is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week because people are worshiping a

God that is a figment of their own imagination, a recreation of self rather than the

God of Scripture. And that's idolatry. Now, why do I say that? Go into just a typical evangelical church.

And if you could get everyone to sit down with a piece of paper and you ask them, write out the attributes of God, you could even give them the word

God is holy. What does that mean? God is this. What does that mean? What does

God say about this? How does God act with regard to this? When you turned in all those papers, you would be astounded.

That the God that's being portrayed there, that these people are worshiping oftentimes is not, it doesn't look anything like the

God of the Old and New Testaments. A minister one time, he said, Paul, I would like for you to come and teach on the attributes of God.

And I said, well, brother, that's pretty controversial. And he said, what do you mean?

I said, well, I just want you to pray about it because I mean, split your church or anything. I don't want to do that.

And he goes, it's a church. We're Christians. How can how can you coming to us teaching on the attributes of God cause problems?

And I looked at him, I said, brother, if I begin to teach what the Bible says, not not just my interpretation, but just a classical view of God as set forth in our creeds, our confessions and our most beloved books of theology.

If I go into a typical evangelical church and begin to teach what the Bible teaches on God's righteousness, his holiness, his sovereignty, his wrath.

If I begin to teach on this, I said, you will have members who will stand up and say this. That is not my

God. I could never love a God like that and walk out of this church building. And people listen, when my children were born, they weren't born with knowledge.

And it's the same way we have a lot of unconverted people, but even the converted people must be taught who

God is. And if they're not. Taught, then how will they stand?

How will they ever be able to truly worship him or understand their own place in his plan?

And I can challenge, I can just go to evangelical church after evangelical church across America and say, how much how much time do you teach on the attributes of God?

The greatest of all knowledge is never taught in your pulpit. I mean, this

God who is of infinite glory that we will not be able to track down, we will not be able to get around him even through a thousand eternities.

You've exhausted the teaching on him, I suppose. Or have you ever even begun to teach about God?

And so you're going to have all these divergent views among people.

Now, another thing about idolatry that sooner or later, and we see this in evangelicalism all over America.

In Romans chapter one, it always comes back essentially to man replacing

God. Man is the focus. Humanism. It's all about you.

Now, those of us who are against this type of thinking are often misunderstood. Well, you don't love people or you don't care about the needs of people.

Yes, I do love people and I care about the needs of people. I just understand that those people are not going to be healed by becoming more and more self -absorbed.

They're going to be healed by a greater and greater view of God. They're not going to be healed even by having all the little answers in the

Bible to their problems. They're going to be healed by this magnificent view of God.

Because there are a lot of times when things that are going to happen in my life, in your life, that even the greatest theologian cannot explain to us.

Painful things, horrible things, things that seem, as the hymn writer said, to be a frowning providence.

And even the greatest preachers in the world can say nothing to us. We're in that situation that Job was in.

We have no answers. Then what is going to help us? It's not going to be a pat on the back or some trite answer.

It's going to be, look to your God. You don't know what he's doing, but you know who he is.

And because you know who he is, you can trust in what he's doing. Do you see? So, yeah, idolatry abounds.

And even God's own sheep are misguided because the ministers are not giving them solid food.

People say, well, you know, it's difficult to understand this stuff and teach it. But it's necessary.

Absolutely necessary. I don't have all the answers.

That's not what makes me zealous or keeps me going when everything is just pulled out from under me.

It's behold my God. It's the things I do understand.

Calvary. Jonathan Edwards says oftentimes throughout his writings that, and other philosophers do the same, that any rational creature must have a motivation for what he does.

If he does not have a reason or motivation for what he's doing, then it's absurd.

It's ridiculous. He's insane. Like if a man is standing out in the rain and I ask him why he's standing out in the rain and he says,

I don't have an idea why I'm standing here, then I can only assume that he's an imbecile.

But if a man standing out in the rain because the house is on fire, I know he has a proper motivation. God has a reason, a sunum bonum, a greatest good, an end to everything he does, and that is his glory.

Now, Edwards was also very helpful in that he was able to bring the two things together, that God does everything he does for his own glory, which is the greatest good also he could do for his creation.

So there must be a proper motivation. Now, in all the activities that have been mentioned, evangelism, missions, helping the poor, worship, prayer, everything else, we have to ask ourselves now, what is our motivation for doing these things?

Now, if we are by and large a people who are ignorant of who

God is and God's purposes, can we really have a proper motivation?

Now, I want you to know that I work with a lot of Christians who live in jungles and things such as that.

So we're not talking about everyone has to have this tremendously high theology in order to do evangelism and worship and missions in a proper way.

But what I am saying is this. If a person has been genuinely regenerated, genuinely converted, is truly

Christian, then the spirit of God is going to move them to do these things of evangelism and missions and worship and helping the poor.

But by teaching the scriptures to these people, teaching the believer who

God is. It will so hone their devotion.

It'll so hone their motivation. It will increase their zeal. It will give them a right way of looking at things, a right direction to follow.

Even for myself, after 30 years in the ministry, you know, I'll get clouded at times.

Why am I praying? Why am I doing evangelism? Why am I going out here and preaching?

Why am I doing these things? And it's helpful to have a high view of God to say it's all for him.

It's all for him. You know, I know it just sounds like we're beating a dead horse.

But the fact of the matter is, there's no real need to talk about another problem, because this is the foundational problem.

And until it's dealt with, then we shouldn't work with the peripheral issues. You see, if I understand who

God is, if I understand what that calls forth from me, then it's going to correct or give me correct motivation and reason for all the things we've mentioned.

I mean, let's think about this for a moment. Do I just worship

God because he saved me? Do I just worship

God because he got me a new job? Do I just worship God because he's just saved one of my children?

I mean, why do I worship God? I worship God because of God. Because of the glory, the beauty, the splendor, the perfections of him.

See, when we when we began to teach about God, then a believer could be locked away in prison, his entire family slaughtered, his own tongue cut out, and near starving to death as he's being eaten by lice, and yet have proper motivation for dragging himself up to his knees and worshiping

God. Why? Just one doctrine. God is beautiful. God is righteous.

God is all these things. I go out, I tell missionaries, I say, many of you will go out.

You're going to go to the mission field and you're all excited. And you think that you're going to walk out there and walk into that plaza and begin to preach about God.

And I said, been there, done that, got the T -shirt. I walk in the plaza. I preach about God.

It goes well for about five minutes. There's a good crowd. And then all of a sudden someone starts screaming that I have a demon or I'm a blasphemer.

And they take me and my tracks and my Bible and my little portable pulpit, and they throw me out in the street.

It's going to take a lot more than my love for people. To pick me up and all my little tracks while people are laughing and walk right back into that plaza and preach again.

It's going to take the knowledge of who God is. I do it because he's worthy, because I know him.

You see, let me give you an example.

They talk about, you know, space as a final frontier. They talk about the oceans, that we probably know more about the moon than we know about the oceans.

Those types of things are exciting, that there's something to be discovered yet. Yet when we talk about the attributes of God, we're talking about the minds of angels and men could be brought together throughout a thousand eternities to try to scope out who this

God is. And they'll never even get a glimpse of his beauty compared to what is there. I try to teach my children about the beauty of God.

The pleasures of God. See, we talk about attributes. We're not just talking about this or that.

Omniscience, righteousness, holiness. No, it's all these things that he is. The fullness of all perfection.

And it's those things that motivate us. Sometimes people will say to me, you know, you're 50 years old.

Where does the zeal come from? They don't like to hear the answer. The attributes of God.

Knowing who God is and what he has done for me and Jesus Christ.

That is it. That's it. That's enough right there to propel a human heart for an eternity.

That knowledge itself. That is the knowledge that creates piety.

True piety. That is the knowledge that builds zeal and fans it into a flame.

It is the knowledge of who he is. That's what makes me so mad. I'm thinking, what are you?

What are you ministers doing? You've got to dress God up. You've got to make him pleasing.

You've got to make him attractive. Or you've got to take the gospel and you've got to put things around it.

I would liken it to this. In the same way with the church. Taking the church and transforming it so that it's culturally relevant.

I have a daughter. Most men my age have a daughter or son. But I have a daughter.

She is precious to me. Now, I have a bride, a wife, and she is precious to me.

Let's say that I go on a long journey and I leave a few men in charge of the care of my wife.

Let's say that she's a simple woman with a simple beauty and inward pleasantness about her.

She is she's unsoiled, well protected, pure, even a bit naive because she knows nothing of this.

This knowledge of good and evil. And I leave her with a group of men.

And while I'm gone, they decide that she's not attractive. And so they dress her in the most gaudy fashion.

They paint her face. They cover her with sensuality.

And then they parade her back and forth before carnal men in order to attract them into something they're doing.

When I come back, I'll deal with those men. That's exactly what God's going to do. Taken the gospel, taken the church of Jesus Christ and dressed it like vanity fair.

In order to attract carnal men. That type of attraction cannot save carnal men.

It can only deceive them. The only thing that can save carnal men is the spirit of the living God functioning through a red hot heart.

A preacher on fire with a passion for Christ and a passion for his church. These men are doing a great disservice to God.

And they will be judged for taking the beautiful, glorious gospel of our blessed

God and repackaging it for the 21st century.

Taking the church of Jesus Christ and dressing her in the wardrobe of a prostitute so that carnal men will be attracted to her.

You do not think Christ, when he comes back, you do not think he'll deal with them. He will deal with them.

And they need to repent now. They need to repent now. I do believe that pragmatism is sapping the strength of Christianity.

And here's a few things that we need to understand. First of all, just by saying pragmatism, we are going outside of the scriptures to find a way to do something that God has commanded us to do.

And I think we would all argue that that's dangerous, if not absolutely absurd. It's suicidal.

God has commanded us to do something. He's also, in the scriptures, shown us how he wants it done.

Another thing that we need to understand is this. The more we cut ourselves off from the arm of the flesh, the more we will see

God work. That's always the case. Just go down through biblical history and you will see that.

God not only calls his people to trust in him and not in the arm of the flesh, but he puts them in specific impossible situations so that he is the only one who delivers them.

So when someone tells me, yes, we need to have a high view of God and we need to preach the gospel this way, just like you said, it's biblical.

But that just won't work. What you need to realize is it never would work.

It wouldn't work in Spurgeon's time. It wouldn't work. It won't work here.

It won't work there. That is the the mystery of the gospel. It is something that won't work except that God has ordained it and the spirit of God is behind it.

Let me give you an example of how ridiculous this is. You know, one of the greatest evidences of the validity of Christianity is that it's still here.

Because when you look at it in human standards, it's absolutely absurd. It is the most absurd religion on the face of the earth.

In what way? Well, let's just look at the ministry of the Apostle Paul. He's from Palestine.

He's a Jew in the Roman Empire. That was not looked upon that favorably to be

Jewish. So now he walks in to Athens or any other city and he goes straight for the philosophers.

And this is what he tells them. Look, now, these are philosophers who have a long history.

Philosophy was started in that area. You have Thales. You just keep going. You have all these great philosophers.

He walks in the midst of them and he says, you are all wrong about everything.

And that's basically what he tells him. They start laughing at this Jew who's telling them this.

And then almost to coax it on, I can imagine them saying, so who's the one true

God? Well, the one true God is the God of the Jews. Oh, that oppressed, slavish sort of people over in Palestine.

Yes, absolutely. That's the one. Well, tell us about this God. Well, God has a son and he was born in Bethlehem.

Really? The king, he was born to the house of the king or how did this happen?

Well, no, he was born to a just a poor peasant girl. Well, her family was royalty.

I mean, the husband. Well, she didn't have a husband. It was supernatural. Can you imagine what's going on here?

The laughter. And they say, well, well, is he reigning now in Jerusalem? No, all his people killed him as a blasphemer in the

Roman Empire. Empire killed him as a traitor and as a revolutionary. He was crucified.

So now you serve a crucified God. Well, he's not crucified. He was raised on the third day from the dead.

Well, I guess then the whole nation just fell on their knees before him. Well, very few people saw it. Actually, he only showed himself to about 500 witnesses.

And then where did he go? He went up into heaven. Where is he now? He's there.

Oh, and by the way, Caesar's not Lord. Jesus is. Can you imagine? I mean, try to put yourself in that situation.

You're among a bunch of pagans who have no clue whatsoever about Old Testament scripture, prophecy, anything.

And you walk in the midst of them and begin to preach this kind of message. That's impossible. It won't work.

Some of them followed Paul out of there and became disciples of Christ. Why? The regenerating, illuminating work of the spirit of God.

You want to do something in the arm of the flesh? You go to it. But the more you do that, the more the work of God's spirit is going to be withdrawn.

I go into the Aguaruna tribe of Peru or up in the northern mountains where some people can barely read.

They don't even know where Jerusalem is. There are men who have suffered deeply for Christ.

They couldn't give you 10 reasons why they believe Christ is resurrected. They couldn't give you 10 legal historical reasons.

They couldn't give you evidence that demands a verdict. Then why are they willing to die for this Jew who rose again from the dead?

How do they know it's true? Because when the gospel was preached to them, the spirit of the living God regenerated their hearts and bore witness to them that it was true.

Christ was revealed to them. What these pragmatists who are looking for a new thing that will work need to understand, that Christianity has never worked.

Not in Paul's time, not in Spurgeon's time, not in Whitefield's time. It has always been this magnificent display of the power of God through the foolishness of preaching.

And the more we cut ourselves off from that, the less we are going to see God. And that's exactly what we have.

We do not see much of God. Because we do not see much of preaching that stands alone without pragmatism.

We will build this church upon the word of God, upon the proclamation of the gospel, upon a high scriptural view of God, and people will come.

And what ministers don't understand is those who do preach a high view of God, those who do put this emphasis on the gospel, those who give nothing to the people but scripture and prayer and worship, people are moving across countries to come to their churches because they are so hungry.

They are so hungry. Pragmatism is very, very dangerous because it is not biblical.

Pragmatism is very, very dangerous because it hinders the work of God.

I have seen, not just in scripture, but throughout my life, in almost every instance, the more

I depend upon the arm of the flesh, the less I am going to see of God.

And these preachers today, they need to realize that.

They need to realize that. The weapons of our warfare are not many.

They are Christ centered, spirit saturated, expository preaching of God's word.

Intercessory prayer. And sacrificial love manifested in service.

Those are the weapons of our warfare. So I would challenge those men and ask them, how many hours a day are you in the word of God that you might preach that way?

How many hours a day are you on your knees? If you cannot tell me that you are, then don't tell me it won't work.

Nations have been overthrown because of men and women on their knees. Kings have trembled because of impoverished preachers going around the countryside, speaking much of Christ.

What we have today are a lot of little boys who want to play church. But they do not want to dwell with the living

God and walk with him. They cannot say the God before whom I stand. I come in his name and I preach to you.

They cannot say that. But if they would cut themselves off from these things, they would see

God and they would see his power. The problem is because they've built their congregations upon vanity, fair and a six flags over Jesus.

If they do get serious about following God and preaching God, they're going to find out that the greater part of their congregation wants nothing to do with God and wants nothing to do with the gospel.

People tell me all the time we live in a country where it costs nothing to follow Jesus. No, we live in a country where it can cost you everything to follow

Jesus. If you truly follow Jesus. If we want to see ourselves change, if we want to see our church change, our families change, it always begins, doesn't it, with the word of God and the renewing of our minds.

It would be very helpful for many to simply take the man stranded on an island approach.

If a man was stranded on an island who had no fountain of knowledge except one book, and it was the

Bible. And he decided that he had to base his entire life upon that book. What would his life look like if there were no other influences cast upon him?

Now, we live in a culture and a cultural Christianity that casts upon us many winds and many influences are not biblical.

We need to try to shred ourselves of those things, compare everything with the word. And then renew our mind, renew our mind, renew our mind, study the word.

I would also something has been very helpful to me to go back through church history and find the men and women who had the highest views of God, who considered the gospel to be precious.

And I would learn from them in my own life. It has been great preachers like Spurgeon and Martin Lloyd -Jones, missionaries like Hudson Taylor, prayer men of faith like George Mueller.

You know, the Puritans, John Flavel and his works about the person of Christ and the glory of Christ.

And I realized that throughout history, there have been men and women that had such a high view of God that it shames my culture, it even shames my own

Christianity and my own journey. Because what we need to realize is that we are...

Christianity is not a lone wolf religion that we need others and most recognize that.

But it's not a lone wolf religion either with regard to history.

There were Christians before us to know those men and women who walked with God and to light our fire in theirs, to help them kindle the fire we already have.

It's very, very helpful, very helpful. Another thing that I would say here at the end that I think is extremely important is because of many men that God has raised up,

I think specifically like men like Dr. Piper and other men that have been such a blessing to the church.

And they have also kind of pointed us back to other men, that there's kind of a new generation of young people and young ministers that are hearing these things, the supremacy of God and the centrality of God and the glory of God.

And that the gospel is just, you know, the magnificence of the gospel. And they're hearing these things and that's good.

But they're hearing them almost like a parrot. And that they're hearing and they're saying what they hear.

But how much of it is becoming a reality? And I think that that reality is born out of.

First of all, knowing that humbling ourselves and recognizing we can hear these things, we can embrace these things, but they do not mean the realities in our life.

And until they are realities in our life, the work is not finished. And I do not believe these things can become realities apart from prayer.

What frightens me are men full of a lot of correct knowledge.

Even a lot of great views of God. But it hasn't been applied to their heart through prayer.

They're not, they may have the theology of the Puritan, but they don't have the devotion of the

Puritan. They may talk Edwards all day long, but they won't join Edwards in his prayer closet.

They will build a statue to Brainerd, but will they follow him out in the snow to weep over the

Indians? These high views of God. Let me share something with you that's so important.

These high views of God are not just gained for yourself in a library, sitting in a cushy chair.

They're fought for. They're costly. The flesh hates them for them to really become realities.

The flesh does not want to get up at two in the morning when the spirit prompts to get up and to seek your

God. Or the tendency may be to see other ministers who are just running wild and doing all kinds of things.

And their life seems so easy and their ministries are so prosperous. And you've locked yourself away in the study, just seeking his presence, experiencing

God. Not just some comprehension of the mind or the intellect.

Honestly say that not only do you have high thoughts of this

God, you walk with him. He is your reality.

And that's one of the reasons I appreciate

Tozer so much and his idea of the pursuit of God, of knowing

God. That although he was he was orthodox and he knew the ancients.

He had experience with God. He walked with God and he would share the need for that without being afraid of being labeled as something he wasn't.

You look at Tozer and say, well, he was a mystic. He was this. He was that. No, he was a man of God.

He wasn't just someone who knew things out of a book. He knew the one the book talked about.

He walked with him. So that's what I want to, you know, even these young ministers and such should have these kind of views of God.

Praise God for that. But don't stop there. You're delighted in what you know.

Or are you delighted in knowing him, his presence, his power?

So it's more than just the mind. It's the heart. It's more than just I know great propositional truths and can argue with you until the sun sets three or four times.

It's when the sun sets and the sun rises, you'll find me praying, walking with my God. That's the difference.