December 7, 2016 Show with Joe Carter on “How to Argue Like Jesus” AND “The NIV Lifehacks Bible”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio

platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues

facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one

man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we

converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another

wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear

from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arns.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,.

And the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arns and your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on

the seventh day of December 2016, a day that will remain an infamy,

the day that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and which launched the United

States having participation in World War II, but that has nothing to do

with the discussion that we're having today.

Today we have for the very first time on our program Joe Carter.

I'm looking forward to this with bated breath.

Joe Carter is editor at Culture 11 online magazine, senior editor

for the Gospel Coalition and a senior editor at the Acton Institute, a communication

specialist for Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, and an adjunct

professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College.

He is the co -author of How to Argue Like Jesus, Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest

Communicator, and the author of the NIV Life Hacks Bible, Practical Tools for

Successful Spiritual Habits.

Those two books are actually our topics for today on Iron Sharpens Iron, and it's my honor

and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Joe Carter.

Well, thanks for having me on, Chris.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Joe, our email address is

chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And before we even go into the subject at hand, tell us

exactly what you do as a senior editor.

Well, actually, you're an editor for the Gospel Coalition and a senior editor at the Acton Institute.

Tell us about your role as an editor for the Gospel Coalition.

At the Gospel Coalition, I write.

Two articles a week, several others that

relate to presenting the gospel in American context.

And tell us about the Acton Institute, where you're a senior editor.

Is that named after Lord Acton, who famously said, power tends

to corrupt, but absolute power corrupts absolutely?

That's right.

At the Acton Institute, we focus on issues of personal liberty and economics,

and filter it through a Christian worldview so that we kind of present

economics and liberty from a Christian perspective and try to promote that within the American government.

Great.

And, well, you're also a communication

specialist for Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention.

Tell us something specifically about that.

You're also, we work a lot on promoting ethics, not only within the Southern Baptist Convention, but also throughout

evangelicalism and promoting the broader American culture.

We try to promote, and my role there is.

I do a lot of writing for them, do some editing and some kind of whatever.

Needs to be done.

Great.

And last but not least, you're an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College.

Is that the same Patrick Henry College that is in Lynchburg, Virginia?

Uh, it's in Personville, Virginia.

Did it start in Lynchburg, Virginia?

Uh, no.

It's always been in Personville.

I think you may be thinking of Liberty University.

No, no, no.

Well, let me give you an idea of where I'm coming from.

When I was in my early 20s, and I was a brand new Christian, I

was dating a girl who was a graduate of Liberty University.

She was my very first Christian girlfriend, and she was a school teacher at

Jerry Falwell's church where he pastored, Thomas Road Baptist Church.

And there was a professor there who took me, I can't remember his name, but he took me on a

tour of the building that he envisioned becoming Patrick Henry College.

And then I lost touch with him, and I don't know if it's the same college or if they moved

or if they never wound up purchasing that building in Lynchburg, but maybe there's no connection.

But I clearly remember it being called Patrick Henry College.

It could be, because I think they got the idea in the 80s.

Yes, that's when I was dating this young lady, my first Christian girlfriend.

Actually, they didn't launch the school until 2000, so it's only been around about 16 years now.

Yeah, that's why I said that this was just a vision that this professor and some of his colleagues had.

So that's interesting.

And before we even go into your books, How to Argue Like Jesus and the NIV Life Acts

Bible, I'd like to know something about your own personal testimony of salvation, what kind of religious

background you were raised in, if any, and what providential circumstances the Lord

used in your life to draw you to himself.

Well, I was very fortunate.

I grew up in a family of Christians.

I grew up in the church.

I came to Christ when I was very young, so I was fortunate to know him all my life.

I've been very blessed to be able to work in a lot of places, being

able to serve Christ directly, and a lot of ministry opportunities.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a minister, and I ended up kind of moving more into the writing side, but I've

been very fortunate that God has looked out for me from an early age and kind of kept me close to him

throughout all these years.

And when did you realize that you wanted to become a writer, and where you realized you had these

gifts and so on?

Well, when I was in the Marines,.

I started writing a column for a small little newspaper in Texas, and that kind of got me interested in writing.

And after I got out of the Marines, I got a job at a Christian think tank and started working on some

bioethnic issues and started writing there, and just kind of expanded from there.

I just kind of started a long blog in 2003, Evangelical Outpost, and that kind of caught on and got

a little bit of attention and helped me hone the craft and kind of launch my career from

there, from that little platform.

Great.

Well, we have as our theme for the first hour, as I mentioned, your book, How to

Argue Like Jesus, Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator.

Obviously, a lot of people who look at that title, they may be startled to have the

words argue and Jesus in the same title.

They may be wrongly thinking of Jesus saying something like, Peter, I told you a thousand times, put that net down and

get over here.

But that has nothing to do with the kind of arguing you're talking about, right?

No, we kind of have a very narrow view of our antagonistic when

really it's more about persuading people through argument to see your side and view

things your way.

And so, this is obviously a valuable thing for all Christians

to learn because this art, because of the fact that if we

are obeying Christ himself, if we are obeying God, we are to be engaging

others about our faith.

We are to be proclaiming the gospel.

We are to be evangelizing.

We are not to be hiding our faith and ashamed of our faith or be cowardice about it.

So, if those things are true about our lives, we are certainly going to be

engaged in conversations.

We're going to be hopefully trying to persuade people

of the truth.

Now, obviously, I believe, I don't know if you're aware of this, but I'm a thoroughgoing five -point Calvinist.

But obviously, even though God is sovereign over all things, I still believe that he uses

humans as means to bring the gospel to people.

So, the power of persuasion is an important thing nonetheless.

And so, tell us about this Christ who we are to

be imitating to begin with.

Tell us about Christ the Communicator.

Well, we kind of often overlook because you're right, as a Calvinist, I kind of, we put a lot of emphasis on the role of the Holy

Spirit.

We kind of tend to downplay in what God has called us

to be evangelism and apologetics.

And when we look at Christ, we kind of tend to think, well, of course, everybody was drawn to him.

He was Jesus.

And we forget that we're looking at it from the other side of history.

We're looking at it from seeing the fulfillment of Christ, his mission.

And we kind of overlooked that when he was talking to people, he had to persuade them just like we did.

He had the same kind of problems convincing people.

We see that throughout the New Testament in the Gospels, where people just didn't believe him.

By his message, he didn't persuade them.

So, we can look to him and see the kind of the same problems and the same opportunities that he had

that we face today.

And we already have a listener in Slovenia who has a question.

Joe in Slovenia says, often we hear such statements like, if you

can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Also, it is common to hear someone characterized as being un -Christ -like if they

offer a stern argument with exacting clarity that is

scripturally unapproving of others' behaviors or beliefs.

In light of that fact, the careful reading of the Gospel reveals Jesus is speaking sternly to

strangers, governing authorities, religious leaders, his own family, and disciples.

How did we get the all -too -common milk -toast image of Jesus?

How did we arrive at the idea that Christians are only and exclusively to say nice, gentle,

kind, and non -controversial things in order to be Christ -like?

Thanks so very much for serving the body of Christ with sharpening edification.

Well, thank you very much, Joe in Slovenia.

That's actually an excellent question to start the ball rolling with this very conversation, I think.

That's a really good question, and I think what we kind of diverged is the idea

of Gospel love, and a godly love for our neighbor.

Since probably the 19th century, we've had this kind of romantic notion of love, and romantic love is very kind, it's very

gentle, it's very sweet, and so we kind of get the two words love mixed up, we get two concepts mixed up, and we

assume that if we're talking about Jesus' love, that he must be that kind of loving.

He must be very nice, very gentle, very kind, not trying to offend anybody,

and so that's kind of seeped in, especially in the social Gospel movement, that kind of seeped in where that's the Jesus is a

very, what we probably call now a hippie Jesus, you know, free love, just loves everybody, wants

everybody to get along, and really just, it ignores the Jesus we actually see in the

Scripture.

Yes, Jesus was kind, but he could also be very harsh, and I think what the key is, what was

the context?

Jesus treated different people differently because of the context, and usually it was the people who knew the most that he treated

harshly.

He was a lot more harsh, especially in his rhetoric, than he was for people

unfamiliar with the Jewish faith, or had no real

reason to really, and I think we kind of see the same thing.

We should be more gentle with the unbelievers and still

disbelieve.

Yeah, it seems that Jesus also.

Used his harshest words towards religious leaders, and was much

more gentle in his approach towards people who were overtly involved in things

that were scandalously wicked, like prostitutes and so on.

Yeah, Jesus understood that a lot of times people, when they were.

Actually engaged in these things, especially the prostitutes and the tax collectors, they knew

they were wrong, and they just needed to be called out on it.

He didn't need to cram it down their throats because they knew they weren't wrong.

Right.

With the religious leaders, on the other hand, they found ways to justify themselves.

They found ways to kind of twist Scripture, twist essentially Jesus' own words, because Jesus is God, and

it's his words in Scripture.

They were twisting his own words to justify their own sin, and that's where we really see him getting very.

Upset and being very harsh in his combinationism.

Yeah, and typically when we have Jesus engaging those who are more

scandalously wicked, those who are involved in prostitution and so on,

they were approaching him because they were having stirrings of

a remorseful conscience or something, and you know, you have the woman at the well did not

approach him, that was a providential meeting, but you have, you know, the woman washing

Peter's, Jesus' feet and drying them with her hair and so on, and this was a scandalous

thing for the Pharisees to see.

But the Pharisees were, in contrast, standing in judgment against him, so it was a different kind.

Of encounter usually, correct?

Yeah, the hardness of the person's heart, and because

the Pharisees tend to have the hard hearts, his ridicule was a lot harsher with him, and he

was very, he was a lot more brutal in his combination of them and calling them out and

trying to point out, to kind of break through their exterior to get to the heart, because they

kind of built up a a defense mechanism, or a self -defense mechanism, where they could justify just about anything they.

Did, because they were the better people.

Right, and although he was obviously much warm, much

more warm to Nicodemus, because Nicodemus was seeking him out in the darkness

of night, he still rebuked Nicodemus, basically saying he should know more than

you are acting like.

You know, you're a leader in Israel, and you don't even know these things that I'm telling you.

So he was still somewhat insulting to Nicodemus.

We do see that a lot, like on the.

Road to Emmaus, where Jesus often describes how people twist the Bible, and how they

just didn't see the Bible, or didn't see the words.

So usually, he often says, especially when people, scholars, that

should know what the Scripture is, often seems kind of a little harder on those

people, because I think his point is that the Scripture is very clear, and we

make it harder than it needs to be.

We often add things to it unnecessarily to miss the message of Jesus.

And Joe from Slovenia has a follow -up question.

He says, occasionally we hear someone objecting to developing

spiritual disciplines, like regular Bible reading, prayer, meditation, fasting, as being

legalistic.

How should we view efforts of trying to develop godly habits and routines, and how do we avoid legalism

and develop disciplines that promote spiritual growth in our relationship with God?

And I apologize, Joe, in Slovenia.

I realize now I am jumping the gun, because he intended me to read you that question during the

second hour for our Life Hacks discussion.

So I guess we could leave that question for later for Joe in Slovenia.

But anyway, Joe, by the way, you have won a free copy of How to Argue Like Jesus,

Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator by Joe Carter and John Coleman, so

keep your eye open in the mail for that.

That's going to be shipped to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service,

cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com.

That's cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for BibleBookService .com.

And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for their faithful sponsorship of Iron Sharpens Iron.

Tell us about the emotional Jesus.

Well, there's three, and that's pathos to

appeal to emotion, logos to appeal to reason, and ethos to appeal to character.

And a lot of times we see Jesus using pathos in surprising ways, because we think of

pathos, we think of emotion.

I think yesterday on your show, you mentioned Jonathan Edwards.

He had a very powerful sermon, but he had a very bland tone.

He just kind of read the term, you know, sinners in the hands of anger at God.

He just kind of read the sermon very, very plainly and expected the words to carry meaning, and it

worked.

But a lot of times in the way Jesus used emotion is in the way he

talked.

And a good example kind of from my own time is the Martin Luther King's, I Have a Dream speech.

And the reason we're so moved by that speech now is because the repetition of the words, I have a dream.

Martin Luther King used that throughout the kind of build to a crescendo.

And Jesus kind of used the same techniques a lot of times.

For example, in John 21, 18, in the old King James Version, the words verily, verily,

which means truly, truly, he often repeats words like that, are in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are

those, you know, blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit.

By repeating the terms like blessed are, truly, he kind of builds up a kind of momentum.

It builds up emotional appeal that we don't really notice, especially

when we're reading it.

I think it's more powerful, I think, when the people are first.

That kind of repetition of words has an emotional effect on us.

It makes us more likely to accept the message we're hearing.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks, do you

think a lot of this image that we have of Jesus that you were speaking about earlier

has come to us directly from Hollywood in the depictions of Jesus being somewhat of a

sedated, somewhat effeminate, hippie -like person, and perhaps even

from the greeting cards we read and send?

I think so.

I think people have

got their impression.

I think there's a reason why God warned us from, you know, from the very beginning not to make

graven images, or make images, because images have a very different effect on us than words do.

And I think once we started painting pictures of Jesus, and, you know, he's

always white, he's got real soft, clear skin, and very calm looking.

And then that transferred over to the movies, where all the movies where he's very calm, usually, except, you know, when he's...

Chasing out the money changers out of the temple.

Chasing out the money changers of the Pharisees.

That's kind of the impression we get of him.

Instead of looking at his word and thinking, well, what was he really saying?

What was he really like when he was saying these words?

Because also, and when we read, we kind of read, because the Scripture doesn't have a lot of,

kind of, stage directions.

It doesn't say, you know, he said this in a very loud tone.

Read closely to kind of see, what was the context?

What was he saying?

How was he saying it?

In the movies and images, we just kind of have a bland Jesus.

It's all kind of, just kind of one tone throughout.

And I think that kind of gives a false impression of what he was really like, and the message he was really conveying.

Yes, but this image of Jesus that has been common in, perhaps, the

latter half of the 20th century and the 21st century, of him being just a

passive, sedate, harmless individual, is not necessarily the

way everyone viewed Jesus before that.

It seemed to me, from what I understand, that the pendulum was too far in the other direction in many cases,

where you have some of the churches more toward a fundamentalist mindset that

had a Jesus that was all wrath and fury and

condemnatory, etc.

And that's equally fallacious, isn't it?

Yeah, and that's a problem throughout history, is we always kind of try to see the Jesus of law and

grace, the Jesus that was harsh and soft, the Jesus that

we kind of want just one or the other.

We want a Jesus that kind of fits in our mold, and it makes it real hard to see the real Jesus.

And the only way we can see the real Jesus is to look in Scripture and look in the Gospels and look clearly at what he said,

what he did, how he acted, and not try to put our spin on it to make us more comfortable with him.

Yeah, older folks who have left the church or abandoned religion altogether

sometimes give the sad stories of the way that they viewed Jesus growing up as

kids, but today it would be very rare, I think, for a person to have been

raised in an atmosphere like that.

Of course, there are more churches that exist today that are off -balance, or even cults that might

have a very tainted view or warped view of Christ

that do.

Not that they may, but they do.

We also have the Roman Catholic Church that really needed Mary to be a

mediator between the mediator and us, even though Jesus is supposed to be the one mediator between God and

man.

Yet Mary being the mediator between Jesus and us, because she was more gentle and merciful than even Jesus.

And it's amazing when you read some of the heretical prayers of some of the Catholics that are

lauded as saints, where it's very clear that Mary is viewed as being the more kind and loving.

By the way, thank you, Arnie in Perry County, and give us your full mailing

address and we are going to send you as well a copy of How to Argue Like Jesus, Learning

Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator by Joe Carter and John Coleman, compliments of

Crossway, the publishers of this book, and also compliments of Cumberland Valley

Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, who will be shipping this out to you, God willing, within a week or so.

And tell us about Jesus the logician, and if you could define logician for

our listeners who don't know what that means.

Well, several years ago, I stumbled across for Dallas Willard,

how Jesus used logic and reason in his arguments.

And that had a very profound effect on me.

That's kind of what inspired the fear

and sharpened his thinking.

We kind of tend to forget that Jesus was probably one of the most, I believe he's the most

brilliant person who ever lived.

And that when he argued, logical and very carefully reasoned, he

didn't just kind of at this time saying, you know, this is what God,

this is what scripture says, therefore do it.

He often makes some very careful.

Arguments, even when he was based on logic and reason.

And we have Jesus as shepherd, savior, teacher,

and friend, if you could go through all of those one by one.

So shepherd, savior, teacher, and friend?

Yes.

This is in the ethos chapter.

Well, a shepherd is someone who looks after the sheep.

And since we're Jesus' sheep, we're somebody who looks after us, who cares for us, and is willing to give up our life for us.

And ethos is a pillar of character.

Somebody who is willing to lay down their life for you

shouldn't naturally be drawn to you.

It's hard not to care about somebody who cares that much about you.

But he's not only our shepherd, he's not only our savior, he's also our friend.

He wants to know us and to connect with us on a very personal, intimate

level.

And that's something we kind of often miss.

We need to tremble in God's sight.

We need to have that reverence for him.

We also need to know that he loves us intimately and personally as a friend.

He's not somebody distant.

He actually cares what we're going through in

our life, to talk about what's going on in the day -to -day problems in our life.

Jesus wants to have that kind of connection with us.

Savior, friend.

Sorry about that.

I was looking at another question that just came in from a listener in North Carolina.

The one after that is, shepherd, savior, teacher, and friend.

Ah, teacher, yes.

Yeah, and I think it's pretty important to keep that kind of that order too, because he's not only our

friend, he's our teacher.

He's the one that shows us how we should respond to God

and respond to him directly.

So we need to kind of make sure that when we see him as a friend, we need to understand we're not friends on the same

level.

He is a higher authority than us.

He is our teacher.

He is our master.

He's our savior, in that even though we come to him, we come to him just like a child would to their

father.

We can come to our father in friendship, or come to our earthly father's friendship, or earthly mother's friendship, but

there's still that distance.

That's something we need to keep in mind with Jesus, that we come to him as a teacher, and we're his servants.

We're not equals, but even if we are his friends.

We have to get our first break right now, and we will get to your question, Pastor Sterling

Banderwerker in Greensboro, North Carolina, right after our station break.

So be patient with us, and we'll be addressing your question momentarily.

If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question for Joe Carter, our email address is ChrisArnzen

at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live

outside of the USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and

private matter.

And our email address again is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Joe Carter after these messages from our sponsors.

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And if you've just tuned us in, our guest today is Joe Carter, and we are talking about his book,

How to Argue Like Jesus, the second hour.

We're going to be talking about the NIV Life Hacks Bible.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of Shepherds Fellowship in

Greensboro, North Carolina asks, How do we know the proper

apologetic methodology?

And he goes through a list of four.

Depend on self's ability to reason from one proposition to another.

Depend upon one's ability to analyze proofs and use reason to decide.

Depend upon the scripture's ability to reveal truth to us so we can know it for sure,

or any other methodology.

I have a sneaky suspicion that Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker is a presuppositionalist, but if

you could, because of the last, the third comment he made, but if you

could comment on Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker's questions, and if you want me to go through them one by

one, he starts off with, should we depend on our own ability to reason from one proposition to another?

If we're talking about convincing people of certain truths, such as how we got the Bible,

I think that could be effective.

I think once we start getting into the truth of scripture, that's not sufficient means

of apologetics.

And so, I guess we're not supposed to be depending on our own ability to analyze proofs and use reason to

decide?

I would say I'm kind of a soft.

Presuppositionalist myself.

I mean, I think there is

that we tend to overlook the role of common grace, that God has

allowed us to see certain

things, and we can make certain arguments, such

as the existence of God, I think, through just reason, maybe not reason alone, but we can go a long

way with reason alone.

But I think once we get into the depth of scripture and the depth of the truths of the faith, such as salvation and

there's Jesus God, then it's harder for people who are outside our worldview,

outside our presuppositional stance, to actually understand and be able to

effectively see what we're arguing.

But then again, I think we got to be careful not to limit how God can open people's hearts and minds.

I think we need to take the right approach, but I think ultimately apologetics is like evangelism.

We do the work, but it's ultimately God.

Yes, and God always amazes me how he turns the light switch on

in people's minds and hearts, sometimes when you least expect it.

And I've even heard testimonies from people that I know who became born -again

Christians in cults and then left those cults when they began to

realize that the scriptures conflicted with what they were learning in those cults.

I know people who were saved in the Jehovah's Witness cult and in the Mormon cult, but

obviously left those groups.

But God is an amazing God, and he finds his elect,

and he draws them out of darkness, and he saves them.

And that's why I love that the whole picture that we have in John chapter

10 of Jesus' sheep hearing his voice, and they know him, and they follow

him.

And it's interesting that goats don't become sheep.

Goats reject the gospel, and sheep are the ones who hear the gospel and follow it.

So, well, thank you, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker in

Greensboro, North Carolina.

And we are going to be sending you a free copy of How to Argue Like Jesus, compliments of Crossway,

and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

So, thank you for providing your mailing address, and keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron.

Please keep spreading the word about our program in North Carolina.

We have a brand new listener, and by the way, I'm going to, while I'm enlarging his

email because the text or the font is microscopic, I'm going to repeat our email address.

It's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If anybody would like to join those listeners who have already asked their questions, if you'd like to join them by

asking your own, we look forward to hearing from you.

Our brand new listener, who, his name is Edwin, and I don't know

where Edwin's from.

Perhaps you could send me another email, Edwin, with the city and state or country of

your residence.

I would appreciate that.

But he says, thank you for your ministry.

My first encounter with you was when you interviewed Summer White.

I am newly reformed after having my faculty, I'm sorry, after having my faulty

presuppositions challenged after hearing Dr. James R. White take an exegetical look at Romans 9,

and I began to read all of my Bible in its context.

Since Summer White shared your show that interviewed her, I have sought out the links to

listen to your show.

Thank you for your time, and I apologize, folks.

I thought that our listener had a question for our guest today, but if you're listening, Edwin,

shoot us a question for our guest, Joe Carter, and

we'll look forward to hearing from that, but I still appreciate your kind words that you sent in here.

One of the reasons why it's good to learn how Jesus

obviously, our Lord, God, Savior, and King, what

methodology or manner that he used in the art of

persuasion is because very often we learn from the wrong

sources on how to interact with people, and obviously, you know, some of the more

popular people on this planet are not necessarily those we should be imitating.

I'll take as an example Joel Osteen.

Joel Osteen, whenever I have seen him, without exception, on a major television

program that is no doubt being viewed by millions of people and many millions more after that when it

winds up on YouTube, he does not want to say anything that will

make his interviewer uncomfortable or feel insulted in any way, but

that is not what Jesus did.

Jesus was not Jesus, and should not we be more concerned over the never

-dying souls of men and women than we are.

Over their feelings?

Well, you're exactly right, and I think that's why even before we try to persuade, we need to understand why we're trying

to persuade people, and to do that, we need to understand what the human condition is.

What does God say about us, and what are we trying to communicate?

And in the book, we talk about more than just evangelism or apologetics, and persuasion can be,

you know, persuading your kids to do the right thing or persuading them to make the right decisions, and this is a

broad range of persuasion, but in everything, before we start trying to persuade, we need to understand what

Jesus wants us to do, how Jesus wants us to act, what Jesus wants to convince us.

You're exactly right, what Joel has seen is a great example of how he cares more about how his message is portrayed.

How he's portrayed, sending the message, and what the importance of the message is.

He's supposed to be conveying, which is, of course, the gospel.

Yes, I remember years ago

hearing a phrase to be leery of evangelists that are

more concerned over yours than they are over you, and

what they were speaking of, I believe, or this individual was speaking of, was

they were more concerned over your contributions to their ministry, what you have to offer them and give them,

than they are over whether or not you are going to heaven or hell for eternity, and

that obviously is a very key factor in the, what are you,

when you're evangelizing and when you're interacting with people, what is your motive?

Are you trying to win a friend?

Are you trying to, perhaps on the other end of the spectrum, are you trying to prove something about yourself?

Are you trying to prove that you're brilliant?

Are you trying to prove that you are a master at the art of persuasion and all that kind of thing?

And those are obviously horrible motives.

We are to be more concerned over the ones we're talking to, more so

than what they have to offer us or the way that we are to feel about.

Ourselves, correct?

Right, and that's, a motive has a big impact on how we are persuading.

We also, one of the key, the three factors of persuasion is ethos, and it's your persuasion of character.

So we have to have a solid character to begin with, and usually that's one of the reasons we're not persuasive, is because

our character, what we're saying, doesn't match up to what we convey.

A person of love, and Jesus loves us, and Jesus would

be more loving if we're horrible, mean, nasty people on the inside, and people realize that because they see us interact with

others.

So I think the motive is very important, but character is even probably more important than that, because if

we have the right character, we will have the right motives, and we will be able to persuade more in a way that Jesus

intended.

Now what do you mean by spreading.

And sustaining the message in your book?

Well, once you have a message that you want to convey,.

Whether, for most Christians, for example, the gospel, there's ways to

create that message so that it spreads to others.

And when we look at Jesus, he's a prime example of this, where Jesus started out, he had a band of 12 men,

and, you know, some others on the outside kind of hangers on, but it was most of these 12 people that he

discipled, that he gave the message to, taught him how to spread the message.

And from there, it grew into a worldwide global movement that still carries on today.

Once we have a persuasive message, once we know how to persuade,

we need to learn how to kind of train the trainers, how to spread that message, a

small group leader does to their people.

Even something a parent does to a child, it's how do you take what you know and your persuasive ability

to not only push in a way.

Where they can carry that message.

In some of your rhetoric rules of thumb,

you list, first off, your basic message should contain good news,

if you could comment on that.

Well, the people,

I mean, we all of them are negative.

We need something to kind of grasp onto that gives us a reason for hope and a reason for

optimism.

And of course, obviously, that's why, I mean, the most important message in the world, the gospel, is the good news.

That's the most important thing.

But even if there's other things, if we want to be persuasive, it usually helps to start with something

that's not so hard.

Obviously, when you're talking about the gospel, to tell people they're sinners, you explain to them that

concept.

But if you're just carrying another message that's not necessarily related to evangelism, try to focus on

something that will make people's life, being

negative and talking down to them and tell them how bad the world is.

Try to have some kind of positive good news aspect to you.

And then you go on from there to start with your audience's needs.

Yeah, this is, it's easiest for us and all those people

who are using teaching to kind of come up with your idea of what you want to say and just use the same message

to everybody and convey it the exact same way to everybody.

And then what happens is we get somebody who's not familiar with our language, or maybe

they're young kids, and we get tripped up because we haven't

crafted the message.

And I think once we figure out what does

the audience need?

What do they need from us?

What do they need to hear from us directly?

It's a lot easier for us to then,

well, what do we need to

say?

Rather than what do they need to

hear?

Same things.

Some people already know they're sinners.

So you don't need to spend 30 minutes, you know, telling them why they're going to hell.

They know they're going to hell.

They need the good news.

They need something to hold on to.

They need a life preserver.

Think that they don't need the good news.

By listening to what your audience needs,

you can really get to the heart of the matter and actually be more persuasive and more effective.

In reaching them.

Yeah, that's one of the deficiencies and fallacies, to put it

even more accurately, of the modern -day gospel that is prevalent today is that the

good news of the gospel is no big deal, because if you are not telling

people that without Christ and without trusting in His finished work on the cross, you

are going to be damned for eternity, if people have no concept of that, then being

saved, quote, quote, is no big deal.

What am I being saved from anyway?

I like the way I am.

You know, why do I need to be born again?

I like the way I was born the first time.

You know, people, the gospel at the risk of picking on Joel

Osteen, the risk of insulting many of those

listening as well, is that there is nothing amazing about the

grace that is being preached today.

Am I right?

That's exactly right.

I mean, I remember.

Several years ago, probably 2006, before President Obama took office, he did an interview, and

somebody asked him, what is your definition of sin?

And his definition of sin was being out.

Of line with his own values.

So if, you know—.

Can you read that again?

Can you say that again?

I'm sorry.

He said his definition of sin was being out of line with his own values.

It wasn't about being out of line with God's values, being out of line with His values.

And so that's a lot—I think that's very prevalent in America today.

We think, you know, we need God because we can be a little bit better people.

We're already good people, but we need to be a little bit better people.

And by having God in our lives, it'll bring us some comfort in times of sorrow.

You know, if we're depressed, it'll kind of pick us up.

But, you know, there's no need for salvation because there's no heaven—there's no hell.

There may be heaven, but there's no hell.

And so that's the—when that kind of message took root and has been so ingrained in American culture,

it's very hard for people to explain to people why you need salvation when, you know, the very concept of hell is just

too foreign to them.

It's just unbelievable for them to even imagine that a good and loving God would send anybody to hell.

Yeah, and it's interesting that in the entire book of Acts, the word love isn't mentioned.

And I'm not saying that we shouldn't mention love or declare the love of God and

talk frequently about the love of God, but it seems that there is a warped

understanding of God's love that is promoted by many Christians.

And if you just gush with all kinds of syrupy sweet

phrases about how much God loves you, like you're talking to a child, God loves you so much, He loves you

so much.

People are going to think, well, if God loves me and His love for me is an

eternal love and He loves me so much, I really don't have anything to worry about, do I?

The way that people broad brush the word love and apply it equally to everybody,.

Isn't that also dangerous?

It's very dangerous.

And I think that's probably one of the reasons why I think a lot of people, like for myself, for example, when you become

the faith to as children, you're told

often that you're bad and that your behavior is bad.

And you look around, you see other people doing bad things, you have a good solid grasp on badness and evil.

And so when you kind of have an understanding, an innate understanding of sin, it just kind of gets beat out of you as you

grow up that, no, we're not, yeah, you may do things bad, but you're not a bad person, and that you're not an evil person,

and that basically we're all good.

And so as people come to faith later in life, it's kind of hard for them to realize, yeah, I really am in need of

salvation.

I really am bad.

I'm out of alignment with God's values.

I'm out of alignment with what God wants.

If I don't do something, if I don't change, even after, if I don't change and

obey him and obey all his commandments, that kind of

message is very hard to convey because we're just so wrapped up in ourselves and thinking,

you know, how many times have you heard, well, he's basically a good person?

You hear about everybody, and everybody thinks that about themselves.

So when they hear that God doesn't view us that way, that God doesn't think you're basically a good person,

it's very hard for people to wrap their minds around that.

How could that be?

God's good and loving.

I'm good and loving.

Why can't we just, there's kind of an inequality there between us and God because we're good, he's good,

so he'll.

Accept me as I am.

Edwin has written back.

He is from Columbia, South Carolina, and he actually has a question for you this time, Joe.

He says, as I have been reading my Bible, I think I don't like the words of

Christ in red.

Should we highlight what Jesus said or take a step back to see the message of the Bible and how

it points to Christ?

Secondarily, when we persuade, should we speak figuratively like Christ did with parables

or simply just the gospel?

I'm curious why our listener doesn't like the words of Christ.

I think what he means is he doesn't like them being separated from the black type by

putting them in red.

I understand now.

It's not that he doesn't like the words of Christ in red, he doesn't like the words of Christ being printed in

red ink unlike the rest of the text.

Okay.

Do you have any comment about that?

Yeah, I'm actually,.

I'm with him on that.

I can kind of understand why that became a popular thing to do.

It made it easier to search in your Bible.

You can see at a glance the idea that Jesus

is speaking throughout Scripture.

Jesus is found throughout Scripture.

He's got all the words in Scripture separate

in what God says as if they're two different things, and that has actually led to what's called the red letter movement by Tony

Campolo and Shane Claiborne and some of these liberal evangelicals who think that, well, what we should focus on is what

Jesus said, the words in red, the red letters, rather than the rest of Scripture that's a little harsher and,

you know, there's more bad things that, you know, let's just focus on what Jesus says

and, of course, it's the nice Jesus.

It's always the, they forget the letters in red that are a little harsher.

Right.

I completely agree that we don't need to set up a false dichotomy between what Jesus says directly and what he says

throughout the rest of Scripture.

Right.

Especially if you're abusing the fact that the letters of, the words of Christ are

separated in that way.

I don't think it's necessarily innately wrong to, just so while you're reading, you can see

the words of Jesus stand out from the rest of the text just for reading purposes, but they are

no more important than the rest of the Bible because it's all God -breathed.

Exactly.

And he also says, when we persuade, should we speak figuratively like Christ did with parables

or simply just the gospel?

I guess that would, wouldn't that be dependent on the situation?

Definitely, and I mentioned a lot of places in the book about how to use imagery to convey to people

because we do this all the time.

We just, parables are just essentially extended metaphors and we use metaphors all the time.

We use them so frequently we don't even notice them.

Life is a highway to people who are

unfamiliar with the gospel that we're not, we can't take for granted that people have kind of have a

Christian understanding as they did maybe a hundred years ago.

We're free to create parables and imagery and metaphors as long as

they're not, we always need to go back

to the gospel and show them the words directly, but we can explain it in a way that uses imagery and

metaphor and similes and other things like that because that's the way God designed us to understand.

We understand a lot through metaphor.

And we are going to a station break.

Edwin, if you give us your full mailing address in Columbia, South Carolina, not only have you

won How to Argue Like Jesus by Joe Carter and John Coleman, but

since you're a first -time listener, you have also won a brand new New American Standard Bible on top of

that, which we give every day to our first -time questioners that we've never heard

from before.

And so you are getting a double blessing there.

And we thank not only Crossway for their kind gift of How to Argue Like

Jesus, but also we thank the publishers of the New American Standard Bible for supplying us with

these gorgeous Bibles for our first -time listeners with embossed crosses on the cover, really a

gorgeous edition of this version of the scriptures.

So we need your full mailing address, Edwin, and send that off to you right away.

And hopefully, God willing, you'll get both the book and the Bible in about a week.

But we're going to a break right now.

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

chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And please don't forget to give us your first name, city and state and country of residence when you write

in.

We'll be right back with Joe Carter after these messages, so don't go away.

Chris Arnson here and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia.

And here's my friend Dr.

James White to tell you why.

Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

I hope you join me at the G3 conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at

the Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st in

celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Vody Balcom, Conrad M. Bayway,

Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars

of what G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory.

For more details, go to G3conference .com.

That's G3conference .com.

Thanks, James.

Make sure you greet me at the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibit booth while you're there.

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia,.

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?

Or am I trying to please man?

If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do

than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be

vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and

love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528

-5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV

program entitled Resting in Grace.

You can find us at ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA .org, that's ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA .org,

or even on sermonaudio .com.

Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Shopping's Iron Radio.

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon for a visit to the pastor's study,.

Because everyone needs a pastor.

That's 12 noon Eastern to 1 p .m. Eastern time on

WLIE540am .com.

Welcome back.

We are having a wonderful interview, a fascinating interview today with Joe Carter, and we

have been discussing how to argue like Jesus, and we're going to be moving on momentarily

to a discussion of the NIV Life Hacks Bible, but before we do so, I do

want to just ask a couple of more questions about the How to Argue Like Jesus book.

One of the things you tell us to do is to communicate with confidence, if you could

explain further.

Well, because communicating, especially when communicating in the gospel and communicating the message of

Christ, is when we're new believers, we have a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of knowledge, a

lot easily, or we say things.

The confidence we should have should come from a solid grounding in scripture and knowing what

Jesus says and how to convey that message, and

great to have a lot of techniques, like I try to put in my book, for how to persuade, but if you don't know what you're saying, or if you're not

accurate in the message you're conveying, you're just going to spread a false message or give

the false impression.

It should come from actually having a solid grounding in it, but

once you have that, you should be able to speak confidently because you should speak from what you know.

You shouldn't be trying to persuade people about something you're not convinced of yourself, so once you're convinced yourself, you should be able to

communicate in a confident manner, and so that people feel like, well,.

They can trust you in your message.

And this is something we all need to learn, I think, more often.

Know when to speak and when to be silent, if you could comment further.

This is a big thing, especially on apologetics.

I don't know how many hours I've wasted on apologetics websites arguing with atheists

who are never going to, never even going to

concede a minor point on a heart.

And those are times when, you know, you just don't throw your pearls this horse wine.

It's easier to just be silent and move on to something more productive instead of just kind of getting wrapped up in that

thinking that, well, if I just keep arguing, eventually I'm going to win them over.

And sometimes we just need to know, say anything at all.

Sometimes, you know, just like Jesus did.

He didn't try to convince everyone, or he didn't chase people down and try to say, well, no, you really need to

understand my message.

It's between life or death.

He said what needed to be said, and when he needed to be silent, for example, when he was saying for

Pontius Pilate, he was silent.

And we need to learn.

That kind of discernment for ourselves.

And that kind of goes hand in hand with your.

Admonition to listen.

Right.

And this is, this kind of goes back to knowing your audience too, and knowing your audience needs.

We only listen so that we can respond.

We want to hear just enough so that we can say, okay, I know what you're trying to say.

I want to quickly respond with my response.

Instead of saying, what are they trying to say?

What is the heart behind what they're trying to say?

What is the need behind the need that they're talking?

Because once we know the need behind the need, and once we listen quickly, we can actually be more persuasive, because we can

know with confidence what they're, how to convey the message, and how to say it in a way that's going to be really

effective.

I think too often when we hear people weren't convinced by our message, we blame the listener when the whole time

they've been telling us, essentially, they don't understand, not in so many words, but they don't understand it, they don't agree.

And we didn't hear that because we were too busy talking and not.

Spend enough time listening.

And also with listening, that very often involves asking

questions so that the person we're communicating with has a chance to speak here.

Yeah, I think.

They, especially when we talk about apologetics and evangelism, I think questions are probably more

important than anything else, almost anything else we say, because once you ask enough questions,

you can figure out whether somebody's really interested in hearing more.

And sometimes you just need to ask them directly.

For example, when you're a young person interested in apologetics,

when they're talking to somebody, trying to convince somebody, they'll eventually stumble upon something that they don't know, and

the best thing they can say back to you, are you interested in learning more?

And most of them, people say, well, no, they're not.

You know, don't waste your time because they're just not interested.

But if you just kind of data dump it, just not listening to what they're trying to say and not really hearing,

you're just going to waste your time, you're wasting their time, they have no interest, they're just ready to move on.

So listening is probably

more important often than what we're trying to say.

And you admonish us to, when appropriate, stand up to authority, if you could comment on that.

Authority, we're talking about directly.

Not necessarily the, I mean, I'm talking about authority and say in our own churches where we have

biblical solid elders or pastors who know the word of God and they're communicating

effectively.

I think we need to be able to stand up to the Joel Holsteins and need to be able to stand up to people and challenge those kind of,

not challenge them directly.

We're not going to go, you know, try to get on to challenge him, but try

to challenge the message they are saying to people who are hearing that message and are

being drawn to it.

And I think we have to do that carefully.

I think we need to be more empathetic to understand why people are drawn to these kinds of things and not

just assume, you know, we need to smack them away and get them

leading to destruction.

I think we need to first understand why they're drawn to that message so that we can counter it more effectively.

And I was just about to attribute this to Joel Holstein,

don't bend core principles or standards to gather disciples, but I'm not a hundred percent sure that he's bending

anything because he might not share our principles or standards to begin with.

He may be actually teaching what he believes, not that that makes it any better, but

you say you admonish us not to bend core principles or standards to gather

disciples, if you could comment.

Well, Joel Holstein is probably an extreme example, but a lot of us kind of do the same thing just in a lesser format.

For example, we don't want to talk about hell to secular people because it seems weird.

We don't want to talk about the reality of Satan because it's not that we don't believe it,

it's just we're not going to talk about it to people because we want to convince them first.

And then once they're in the

fold, again, people don't get the message because they don't understand

what do I need to be saved from.

They're refusing to talk about those things.

They're refusing to talk about them in a way that stands for truth.

We kind of lose a listener and we become less effective and less persuasive.

We should have a bait -and -switch theology.

People should know right up front what is being asked of them, and they're called to come and die.

They're not called just to kind of add something new to their life on Sunday.

They need to know that the message we're sending them or the message we're trying to persuade them with is

one where it's going to be asking a lot of them.

It's going to ask for them a total change, and we don't need to downplay that just to get them in and thinking,

well, they'll learn that down the road.

That needs to be something that's up front, and so we don't need to compromise on our principles in

spreading our message.

We need to be up front about everything.

If they ask us what our views on gay marriage are, we need to be able to tell them.

If it turns them away, let God deal with that.

Let God deal with their heart.

All we have to do is speak the truth, speak it in love, and do it as effectively and persuasively.

As possible.

Yeah, I don't know if my dear friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries coined this

phrase, but I've heard him repeat it at any rate.

He has said, what you win people with is what you win them to.

So if you are giving some kind of a watered -down message that is filled with half -truths

and perhaps even falsehoods, when they begin to

follow what you have evangelized or preached or spoken about, you're

not leading them to Christ.

You're leading them to this inadequate fallacy that you've created.

I've heard other people say if you hang sacks of

goat food out your church windows, you're going to attract goats to the church,

and your congregation is going to be filled with goats that are not

transformed human beings.

These are not true believers.

These are just people taking up space because they enjoy your music and perhaps enjoy your

uplifting self -help messages or whatever it is that's being proclaimed.

Do you have any comment on that?

Yeah, that's right.

We see a lot of hammering.

A lot of times about when people leave the church.

Like, why do young people leave the church?

What's the problem?

And I think the truth is a lot more people should be leaving the church, because if they really knew what we believed and

what we really taught, they would be running for the doors.

But we're scared to lose them, so we kind of downplay it.

We don't talk about it.

We don't bring it up on Sundays, and I think that's essentially a way of

lying to them.

It's a way of trying to keep them and hoping they come to maturity before they find out what we're really

about.

And like you said, we're not attracting sheep.

We're attracting goats.

We're attracting people who don't really believe, and we're not doing them any favors, and we're not doing

the church any favors.

First by keeping them around and having them believe things that are false,.

That are against the gospel.

And you would manage us to create a sense of urgency, if you could.

Explain.

Well, any message that we express to the gospel, but any message that we want to persuade, there must be a reason

for it.

I mean, it must be some kind of urgency behind it, otherwise why waste your

time?

And so convey, to communicate in a way that says, you need to

respond to this.

You need to reject it or you need to accept it, but you can't be empathetic to it.

And that goes for just about any message that needs to be, that requires a persuasive

response to it.

And I think too often we kind of just kind of have a lackluster, well, we'll talk about, we'll bring it up at one meeting

and maybe six months down the road.

I think we need to be more pushing

our message a little, can

respond quicker.

And decide if they want to respond.

Now, why is Mark chapter six, verse four so important when

Jesus says a prophet is without honor except in his hometown and among

his relatives and in his own household?

Well, we think we're going to be.

Persuasive.

We may think that we

should have a plastic denomination.

And sometimes we don't, we don't find that.

We don't find that our message is felt there.

We're not being persuasive.

The question is where God wants to use us.

Why don't we go to where he wants to use us rather than where we assume that we need to be?

Jesus didn't waste his time, you know, trying to convince the Pharisees who weren't buying his message.

He moved on to other towns and moved on and found somebody who were wanting to hear it.

So we shouldn't waste a whole lot of time.

If people are rejecting our message or rejecting the way we're presenting our message, move on to someone and move on

to people.

Who don't want to hear it.

Well, that sounds like it's a dovetail into your admonition not to cast

your pearls before a swine in Matthew seven to six.

That's exactly right.

I think that's, that's expensive.

Those of us who are interested in apologetics, it's very hard for us to realize that

there usually almost nothing comes of arguments with atheists or trying to get into extended

debates about evolution or issues like that because they're not going to change any minds.

We're not going to change them.

They're not going to change our minds.

We're essentially wasting time that could be better used actually edifying people and

persuading those who are persuadable.

But sometimes we just need to be able to cut our losses and move on and go on to the next person.

Now, I'm assuming what you mean.

By that is that in our face -to -face one -on -one

times of informal interaction with the lost, we shouldn't get

bogged down on talking about evolution and things.

But I'm assuming that you would think that it's completely appropriate, if not at times

very powerful, to perhaps invite a lost person to a Bible conference that is

teaching creation and exposing the myth of evolution and that kind of thing.

Oh, absolutely.

And I should make clear that.

Mostly what I'm talking about is our non -face -to -face interactions.

If somebody is willing to give you time to sit there in the presence

of being persuadable, then you do people who are

don't know you, who maybe only know you by an email address or username, and you're

debating them in a comment section.

You're trying to convince Mark from Iowa that evolution is wrong,

and you don't know Mark.

He doesn't know you.

You don't know what knowledge each of you have, so it's kind of a waste of time to get into unhelpful debates when you could

be getting face -to -face and actually trying to convince people who actually have an interest in

being.

Persuaded.

Now, what do you mean by praise those who do well, express disappointment in those who.

Disappoint you?

I think this is, it kind of goes back to, as

a Calvinist, I often find that there are a lot of non -Calvinists who will say, hey, you're

doing a great job.

They like them for fear that people will assume that they're buying into everything, that they're approving of

Reformed theology by praising the Calvinists.

And we should be able to praise people when they're doing good.

We should be able to praise people who are preaching the gospel faithfully, even if they don't necessarily

align 100 with our theology or 100 with our denominational background.

And on the other hand, we should be able to criticize.

We shouldn't have this fear just because somebody has a great reputation.

If they're teaching wrong or they need to be called out on it, we need to call them out on it.

I think, you know, there's a lot of talk nowadays about the celebrity culture and evangelicalism, and I think that is a

problem.

There is a problem when we're afraid to call out big -name pastors because we like them or because they

normally do good work.

We need to be able to be faithful to the message of God and say, brother, you're wrong on this, or sister,

you need to change your position.

I think we need to say that more effectively because if we don't, it can cause people to drift in directions that

they don't need to be going.

I think one of the problems we've had in the past 20 years is a kind of a liberal drift in

evangelicalism because we didn't want to call people out when they didn't teach about hell.

And we didn't call people out when they had kind of a looser preaching love without...

Now, one of the things that seems to sadly be the mantra of

a great portion of modern evangelicalism is that we shouldn't be

dividing over things that they would consider to be nitpicking,

secondary tertiary issues.

And unfortunately, many evangelicals would put on that list

of non -essentials, the gospel, that salvation is by grace alone,

through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

They would put on that list things like the Trinity, the things that are pillars of the faith.

But what do you mean by don't fear division?

Exactly that.

We don't want to be divided over secondary issues, such as, we can have important debates about baptism, for

example, but even those shouldn't divide us.

But we shouldn't fear being divided over things where the scripture's clear on homosexuality, and

it's clear on adultery, and it's clear on fornication.

We can't downplay that because we're afraid of how people are going to react.

We have to tell them the truth because they literally can go to hell if

they don't know and they actually believe that, yes, it's fine to be Christian and believe this.

Those are the times we do need to be divided.

We do need to separate ourselves from people such as Joel's who are teaching false gospel,

or teaching prosperity gospel that's not what Jesus taught.

So we don't need to be fearful about causing division where there already is division.

It's just more of a recognition of the division that's already there.

You can't have a and the same in the same world

is going to dilute the other, so you have to.

Toss the false stuff out.

And what do you mean by words matter?

I've talked about earlier about how imagery, and the images that

got developed, kind of what Jesus was like.

And I think that's where we need to recognize that we need to focus on the words of the gospel, for

example.

The way Jesus said things, what he said, it wasn't just kind of

willy -nilly, just kind of choosing things carelessly.

He had a reason for the metaphors he used.

He had a reason for the parables he spoke.

And so we want to be effective.

We need to make sure that we're using the same words.

We may be able to contextualize them for our audience who doesn't understand

necessarily the same background as we do, but we need to recognize that the words we use to convey

shape the message and shape people's understanding.

And we have a listener in Kinross, Scotland, Murray, who asks, should we ever

presuppose someone has a fear of God even professing Christians?

In other words, I'm assuming he means should we take that for granted that they do when perhaps they don't?

They have a knowledge of God, a basic knowledge of God.

I'm not sure a fear of God.

A fear of God implies kind of a recognition of that knowledge, but I think a lot of

fear of God implies there's a kind of awe in worship.

And I think scripture is more clear on there's more of a kind of a basic knowledge,

a non -deniability.

We can't deny God exists.

We can pretend we do, but deep down we know it.

And I think we can latch on to that.

There's a fear of God that people have a natural awe and worship of God, because most.

People have a natural awe and worship of themselves.

And we are going to be going to our final break and continuing the last half hour of our

program with a discussion on the NIV Life Hacks Bible.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We are coming right back after these messages with Joe Carter.

Linbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue.

In Linbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service.

It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement.

It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages.

Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together.

Hi,.

I'm Pastor Bob Waldeman and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402.

That's 516 -599 -9402.

Or visit linbrookbaptist .org.

That's linbrookbaptist .org.

Chris Arnson here and I can't.

Wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia and here's my friend Dr. James White to tell you why.

Hi,.

I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

I hope you join me at the G3 Conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at

the Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st in

celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Balcom, Conrad M. Bayway,

Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars

of what G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory.

For more details go to g3conference .com.

That's g3conference .com.

Thanks, James.

Make sure you.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. on WLIE radio, www

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We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your

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That's 12 noon eastern time to 1 p .m. eastern time on WLIE 540 AM

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wlie540am .com live streaming globally, so we hope you

start listening regularly to that new program.

If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes and the next half hour to come, our

guest today is Joe Carter.

We were discussing how to argue like Jesus, and now we are entering into the

part of the discussion where we want to talk about the NIV Life

Hacks Bible, and if you have any questions, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If you could explain that very interesting title, Life Hacks Bible,.

Well, a life hack is anything, a tip, a skill, a shortcut, advice that helps you do something

more effectively.

It's a guide to kind of help you incorporate spiritual

disciplines and spiritual.

Practices in your life in a way that helps to go.

Well, I hope I hear one day about you being involved in the NASB Life Hacks Bible since they

sponsor my show, the publishers of the NASB that is.

Well, you go through some major areas.

You have tips for making wise decisions.

You have steps for interpreting the Bible.

You have questions for recognizing intentional sins, and you have tips for finding

time to pray.

If we could start with making wise decisions.

Well, it's more about incorporating a

practice in our life to help us make wise decisions.

I think too often we kind of wait till a decision

pops up of turning to Scripture and knowing what Scripture says

about the issue before we're called on you to make decisions.

And that's kind of what this kind of book is about is to kind of develop yourself in a

way that you're already prepared for them.

You're not reacting.

You're proactively engaging with God's Word in a way that prepares you.

For whatever He brings your way.

And I'll go back to a question that I jumped the gun on in the first hour of the

program that was intended for this discussion.

Joe in Slovenia, he asks, occasionally we hear someone

objecting to developing spiritual disciplines like regular Bible reading, prayer,

meditation, fasting, as being legalistic.

How should we view efforts of trying to develop godly habits and routines?

How do we avoid legalism and develop disciplines that promote spiritual growth

and our relationship with God?

That's a really good question, and it's.

One a lot of people have, especially when we talk about spiritual discipline.

First thing, I think we need to clarify what legalism is.

Now the Bible doesn't have a specific word for legalism.

The concept is kind of taught throughout.

Legalism is an attempt to gain favor with God or impress upon our fellow man by doing something without regard

to our condition of our hearts.

It's just basically kind of three types of legalism.

The first is those who believe they can do something to earn God's favor or obtain salvation.

This is kind of the typical idea of legalism, and it's not very popular today.

We don't see a lot of people that, like the Pharisees, they get upset when you use healing on the Sabbath

because they think that by doing that you're going against what God wants.

So because we don't think about that, and we think that's only part of legalism, we think, well, we can be

legalist.

Because another way we can be legalist is that when we submit to man -made commandments

that are God's law, and we saw a lot of this, especially in the fundamentalist movement, things like

not playing cards or not going to movies.

It was kind of obeying things that God didn't say.

You couldn't play cards.

He didn't say you couldn't go to movies.

We kind of put those on the same realm as God's commands, and that's kind of the main kind of legalism that

most people think of nowadays when they think of legalism.

There's a third type.

It's kind of a pseudo -legalism that treats Christians living as little more than obedience to God's word.

And if that's what their purpose of spiritual formation is, is we're just kind of going through the motions,

then that's the wrong way to approach spiritual formation.

That's the wrong way to approach.

But it's not legalism.

It's simply obey God.

It's not legalism to obey God's commandments to read his word or legalism at

all.

That's simply obedience.

And the problem is out of a fear of legalism, we simply do not obey what God says we

should.

And what about taking a little different spin on

Joe from Slovenia's question about those who

are fearful of being overly disciplined because they don't want their faith to

become stale, routine, rehearsed.

And of course, you have even preachers that take that to such an extreme

they ridiculously, some of them will say they don't even prepare for sermons.

They let the spirit move them.

And that usually means that they're just babbling nonsense from a pulpit.

But if you could comment on that, because obviously there is a danger that

exists of becoming rehearsed, stale, et cetera.

But how do you become organized and develop routines and

disciplines without that happening?

There certainly is a different danger.

In that.

But I think the problem in America at least today, if

we had to get up and run a marathon and we haven't even ran a mile yet, we're not prepared for that because we

haven't even taken the necessary steps to even build up to that.

And I think we should train for the faith, like Paul said, as we train our

bodies, we have to take small steps to kind of build up to it.

And then we also have to have the discernment of knowing, am I overdoing it?

And it goes back to the legalism part, the kind of pseudo -legalism.

Am I doing this because it's become an ingrained habit?

Or am I doing this because I really want to become more like God?

Am I reading Scripture every day because I really want to find out what God's Word is?

Or am I doing it so I can make a mark on my calendar saying I did it this day?

And I think that kind of goes back to the heart.

These disciplines I think are very helpful.

I think they can really transform your spiritual life.

It matters more than the practice.

If the heart's not in the right place, if you're not doing it for to become more like Christ, then it's all for no reason.

There's no purpose behind it.

You discussed, as I mentioned earlier, steps for interpreting the Bible.

Do you think that one of the major problems with people developing

erroneous or even heretical theology is because they don't recognize

the background in which the writers, the authors in Scripture,

the background that they were writing from and in.

They don't know the context.

They're reading it through the eyes of a 20th or 21st century individual

and not really grasping the intent of the authors.

Being a Calvinist, for instance, I believe that much of

the argumentation by our Arminian brethren when they see that

Jesus loves all and wants everyone to be saved and died

for all and on and on is that they fail to recognize that

to Jewish ears, the fact that the gospel was going out to all the

Gentile nations was a shocking new reality that they were

experiencing because the Jews were an exclusive group.

So the words all and everyone and so on had a different

import then.

But if you could explain, if you could comment on what I just said about the

reason why people very often wrongly interpret Scripture even to the point of developing

heretical understandings.

Yeah, I think that's a good question.

I think one of the big problems is as Protestants we're taught that the Bible is clear and that

individual Christians can read the Bible and understand it for themselves.

And that's true, but it requires there's some background.

It's like saying every Christian can read the Bible.

Well, that's true if every Christian can read.

To read the Bible, you first need to read.

You have to have a basic understanding of reading and grammar and all that kind of stuff to understand it.

The Bible is the same way.

You need to understand the types of literature, the genres of literature.

Poetry is different from history.

The Gospels are different from a Pauline letter.

You need to understand what the genre is, how to read that genre.

You need to know the context of it.

What was Paul saying in these churches?

What was going on in these churches when Paul was talking to them?

You really need to have at least a basic level of that knowledge before you can really start to

interpret Scripture in a way that keeps you on

the right road.

And that's why I talk a lot about the study Bible, about how to look at

different parts of Scripture, how to read them, the importance of, you know, relying on solid

biblical commentaries of people who know what they're talking about, that are trustworthy, godly

people who have gone before us and put in some study and put in the work and kind of can help us and hold our hands as

we walk through Scripture.

Because even though we can read it for ourselves, we're reading in a community.

We're not individuals.

God didn't just hand our Bible to me or to you.

He handed it to us as a church, as a community, and we should read it as a community.

And I think by reading, we

see a.

Lot in the church.

And what would you think are some of the most serious errors in the church today that come about as a

result of wrongly interpreting the Bible?

Well, I think there's.

Two things, two problems that we have with the Scripture today that kind of cause a lot of the

problems we're seeing.

The first is not seeing Jesus in all of Scripture.

I think that if we taught people, because I think it's so important, that if we taught people

that Jesus is on every page of Scripture, almost every page of Scripture, the book is about Him.

It's not about us.

It's to us, but it's about Him.

If we have that context and we see that from stumbling into some

grave errors that, well, the Bible is to me, about me, and I can read it in a way that kind

of makes it more about me.

And the second faulty step is what Jesus said is

what's important.

You know, the Law of Moses, well, that's outdated.

That was an old testimony.

We got the new testimony.

We don't need that.

So by not recognizing that all Scripture is God created, by not recognizing that all Scripture is from Jesus,

we kind of pick and choose what we want to hear, and we can make it a lot easier to

come up with heretical views or views contrary to the Gospel, such

as, you know, views on sexual ethics that are completely out of step with what God

wants.

By having those two firmly in place, seeing Jesus in Scripture and recognizing that it's about

Him and all Scripture.

Is from Him, it makes it easier to kind of avoid...

We have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, How

important do you think it is for the average Christian to learn Hebrew and Greek?

Is this just an unnecessary intrusion into our already hectic schedules when there

are already brilliant scholars who have learned and mastered these.

Languages?

Well, let me confess right up front, I don't speak Hebrew or Greek.

I don't read Hebrew or Greek.

I'm not a scholar in that way.

I think people put them in their study of the

Word, and a lot of people say it's not necessary, and I think it's less necessary, I think, today than it is in

previous times, because we have such access to things and because we can...

I think even if you read...

Even if somebody's been to seminary and they've had one semester or two of Greek, they are still going to be relying

on tools.

A Greek lexicon or things like that produced by other scholars that most of us can, even

without seminary training, can use.

So I think we have enough tools in place now that it's become a lot less necessary than it was, say, 200 years ago

when most pastors didn't have, you know, maybe had one or two commentaries that they could take with them.

Now we have an abundance of...

We have an abundance of resources, and if we need to know exactly what it says in Greek, we can have somebody.

So I think it's become less expensive and layman.

I think maybe pastors, there's a lot of reason maybe they need to still do it, but I think for most of us,

it's not that necessary.

And thank you, Harrison,.

In Mechanicsburg.

Please give us your full address so we can get you a free copy of the NIV Life

Hacks Bible, compliments of our publishers of this

Bible, Zondervan, and also compliments of the Cumberland Valley

Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

We'll be shipping that out to you.

And by the way, thank you very much again, Joe, in Slovenia for providing us with

an American mailing address where your daughter lives to ship those books and the

Bible that you've won.

It makes it much less expensive for CVBBS to ship those out.

Really appreciate that very much.

And well, one of the other things that you deal with in depth in this

book, by the way, this is a massive, you know, this is a very large book.

We have over 1 ,500 pages in this NIV

Life Hacks Bible.

But one of the things that you deal with is recognizing intentional.

Sins.

Yeah, there's, I think there's, we should make a difference.

Now, not that one's worse than the other one's, you know, excusable.

It's that a lot of times we know we're going to sin and we still do it anyway.

Sometimes it's because we just haven't developed habits to avoid temptation.

And I think that's the formation comes into play.

That if we develop ways to, if we know that, say, a young man has a habit

of looking at pornography and he's fallen into sexual sins by looking at pornography, what are the habits

that he can set up to prevent himself from getting, how can he set up structures in his life

to avoid those intentional sins, rather than, say, the unintentional sin that's going to pop up when we

react?

Intentional sins tend to be those that are a structural part of our life that we do because

we want to, they're not just something we react to, we go and seek them out.

So I think by setting up certain practices and certain habits, we can avoid those

throughout our life.

And we have.

RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know,

I understand that you have written this book

with the use of the NIV, the New International Version.

I love the NIV and the NASB and the New King James, but I

do have friends who are King James only -ists.

What is the best way to get them to realize that they are really

bordering on heretical understandings of what the Word of God is?

That may be too long of a question to answer in eight minutes, but I can

personally recommend the King James Only Controversy by Dr. James R. White that you can get from

cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com, which clearly refutes

King James only -ism in a loving spirit because Dr. White has a great reverence

for the King James Bible, but if you could comment.

Yeah, I think that's a great point.

I think most people are open -minded.

If they go into it and actually look at the controversy and look at both sides of the argument.

King James only arguments are very weak.

And one of the best reasons why we should look to other translations is because we just have more

resources.

Now we have better access to transcripts or manuscripts of the New Testament, we have better access to

scholarly resources about the understanding of the Greek that weren't around in the 1600s.

There was nothing particularly special about the scholars at the time the King James Bible was

written.

They were great godly men, but they don't have the last word on this.

I think translation is an ongoing thing, and also because our language is different.

The language that we speak is not the same as what was spoken in the King James Version, so we don't understand that language as clearly as

we do our own.

So I think we need a Bible that speaks to us in our language.

In a way that's godly and faithful, but that we can understand.

Yeah, it's interesting that many of the King James onlyists

are vehemently anti -Catholic, and yet they unconsciously adopt the same kind of

superstition over a language.

Like, for instance, you have some of the superstitious traditionalist Catholic who,

if the Mass is not in Latin, then it's not real.

It's a fake Mass.

It's an abomination.

Now, I, as a Protestant, believe all Masses are an abomination, but the

King James only folk have a really superstitious view of this

antiquated English, the King James English, and it really can be quite bizarre, and I think it becomes

heretical, as our listener was saying, when you start claiming that

different translations are not the Word of God.

Isn't that a dangerous thing to say about a translation of what is,.

In reality, the Word of God?

Yeah, I think that's because what happens is, are they translating the

King James Version into Swahili or these other languages?

If they want to do that, it's not the same languages in the King James Version.

So, can people who don't speak English, do they not have access to God's Word because of that?

I think, and again, that's why I think when people really look at the arguments on both sides, it really

falls apart, and that's why King James' only controversy is becoming less and less over the years.

Even people who love the language of the King James Version Bible understand that there's nothing

particularly special about it.

Certainly, it's not the last repository of God's.

Word.

Yes, and I do have many friends who prefer the King James Bible, and

these are wonderful brethren in Christ who do not denounce me as being a heretic or not even being a

brother because I use different translations, but I am not in any way, shape, or

form mocking those who prefer the King James and even exclusively use it from their pulpits and so

on.

But, and last but not least, and we could do a whole show on this, and maybe we will, tips on finding

time to pray.

Very important subject that I need to learn more about myself,.

If you could.

Yeah, I think one of the first things is to recognize how important

is prayer to us, and I think if we actually looked at how much, because we

don't spend any time, we spend more time watching TV or playing video games or just doing

other activities, and I think if we really decide that prayer is important, we need to schedule it.

We need to find times, carve out times of our day where we're just spending time with the Lord, and

I think for a lot of us, it's better to take shorter than, say,

one 30 -minute, hour -long prayer session.

I think, you know, four 10 -minute sessions in a day are a lot more

effective as we spread them out throughout the day, and I think that can really help us focus on

God throughout the day and focus on, you know, really talking to Him about what's

going on in different parts of the day.

I mean, sometimes, you know, maybe in the mornings we talk about preparing for a day, and at lunchtime, we pray for

certain people on our prayer list, and in the evening, we pray about what's going on that evening.

It helps us kind of have that rhythm of going throughout the day, always communing with God, always setting aside

special times to talk with God, and I think even that one small step there can have a huge difference in our prayer

lives instead of just kind of hoping that we can squeeze in, you know,.

Five minutes before bed.

Hey, by the way, RJ, give us your mailing address, and you have won a free copy of the NIV Life Hacks

Bible, over 1 ,500 pages.

It's a hardback, and keep your eye out in the mail for a very large package from cvbbs .com.

Last but not least, we have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, who asks,.

I have heard that the Lord's Prayer, otherwise known as the Our Father, is really just a

pattern or blueprint that Christ has given us to pray, and others,

especially some of my Presbyterian brethren, will recite that prayer every Lord's Day,

and of course, on the other end of the extreme, you have Roman Catholics who repeat it over and over again.

What is your view on this prayer?

Should we incorporate it verbatim into our prayer life, or are we

becoming involved in vain babbling like the pagans, as our Roman Catholic.

Friends sadly are involved in?

I kind of take a middle way.

I use it in my book to kind of what the pattern is, and how we can kind of

play on that pattern to kind of create our own prayers, and I don't think there's anything wrong with using

the words directly, because I think we can pray all of Scripture, and especially the Lord's Prayer.

We shouldn't just be limited to the actual prayers.

There's like 637 prayers, I think, in the Bible, but we can pray any part of Scripture, and we can certainly pray the

prayers that Jesus prayed.

I think we've got to make sure that those aren't the only prayers we're praying, and that we don't let them become just

vain recitations of words along with Jesus, rather than

just kind of using them as just kind.

Of a magical incantation.

Yeah, right.

When I was a Roman Catholic, I can remember just reciting the words like they

were sounds over and over and over again, the sounds that we rehearsed and memorized, like

with the quote -quote Hail Mary and so on, and we really weren't even paying attention to

what was being said.

It was just like a magic spell, if you will.

If you could, in one minute, conclude our program with what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our.

Listeners, brother?

If we want to be obedient to God, we need to set aside

time.

We need to find a way to incorporate this in our life, and if we do, it will not only transform ourselves, it will.

Transform the Church, and transform our culture.

And the only website I have for you is acton .org.

Do you have any other website or contact information you care to share?

Yeah, you can also reach me at thegospelcoalition .org.

And erlc .org, e -r -l -c .org.

E -r -l -c .org, and what does that stand for?

That's for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Okay, e -r -l -c .org.

I want to thank you so much, Joe.

I look forward to having you back on the program, if you could actually stay on the line so I can book another date with you

on the air.

And I want to thank everybody for listening today, especially those who took the time to write in.

CJ, give us your mailing address so we can ship you out a free Bible.

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

Savior than you are a sinner.

We look forward to hearing from you and your questions tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

God bless.