Is David Platt a False Teacher?

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. The question of the day, one that I've gotten a few times that I want to address, and hopefully the shortest, most succinct manner

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I can, is whether or not David Platt, pastor of McLean Bible Church, former director of the

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International Mission Board for the Southern Baptists, popular author, he wrote the book

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Radical, many of you have heard of that, is he a false teacher? Is he a false teacher? Is he a wolf coming into the church?

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This is something that I haven't, he's not someone that I've actually wanted to talk about as much, just maybe it's me,

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I never cared for his preaching style that much. And I've read Radical, I've read his last book, the one on voting,

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I feel like there's another book I might have read somewhere in there, but I'm familiar with him, but listening to him for some odd reason, it's not, it's just a preference thing, it's not a theological thing or anything like that,

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I just don't, I don't care to listen to him as much for some odd reason. But he is popular, he is a pastor that a lot of people have looked to for many years and still do, in fact,

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I saw that he's headlining at the Gettys Sing Conference, which interestingly, along with Vodie Bauckham and John MacArthur and others who you would think would not be in league with his thinking, which look, you don't have to agree with everything someone says to be at a conference, but if in fact he's a false teacher, that makes it awkward.

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If I was at a conference and I had an actual false teacher there who I was speaking with,

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I don't know that I would say, I may say, I may say I won't go, but I think I may, under if the right circumstance presented itself,

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I may still go, I mean, if it's a conference, I'm not talking about a political event, I'm talking about like a Christian conference, we're all brothers is kind of the assumption, we're all sisters in Christ, I'd probably take the opportunity and I'd probably say something to contradict that person's teaching, and maybe

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I'd do it by name, I mean, that's kind of probably what I'd do. Anyway, David Platt's gonna be speaking at the

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SING conference, and so he's very much within the boundaries, according to a lot of people, of conservative evangelical

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Christianity. Now, I've made the case over many years, I've critiqued his, I've critiqued Radical, I've critiqued his book on voting,

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I've talked about the issues with McLean Bible Church, you can go back and you can watch the video I put out about a month ago about the trajectory of from Radical to the present day, kind of why

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David Platt is a controversial figure at his own church, the lies, and this is pretty much indisputable, there is no way to combat this in my mind,

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I've looked at it from every angle I know how to look at it, David Platt has lied repeatedly about the association, the affiliation of McLean Bible Church with the

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Southern Baptist Convention. He's not a man of character, at the very least, very weak on logic and applying scripture to modern questions, like his book on voting demonstrates, and I went through that, you can go check out the episode

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I did on that. Just not someone I'm interested in following, reading, listening to, any of that stuff, that's just, that's where I'm at with David Platt.

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And I wanna go beyond that a little bit today, I wanna, I think it's beyond preference here, it's beyond just,

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I don't like listening to him, I disagree with something minor, there's something I think fundamental here, and this applies, this is

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I think a good example of it, is to use David Platt, because David Platt is not, he's not viewed as like crazy as Thabiti Anabwile, or Dwight McKissick, or Duke Kwan, or Jamar Tisby, or Beth Moore, or the list goes on, he's not in that category in most people's minds, he's kind of this big question mark, you know, where does he really land?

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He's vague, he's not clear, he's like Peter was, you know, in Galatians 2, but I submit to you, I don't actually think that's the case,

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I don't think he's like Peter in Galatians 2, I think he's like the Judaizers, I really do, and I want to give you the reason

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I think that, and I'm just gonna use one example, I'm gonna make it as simple as I possibly can, because there's so many examples

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I think we could pull from, because David Platt has repeated this mantra over and over and over, but let's go to the quintessential sermon that most of you, if you are familiar with David Platt at least, will remember from 2018, where he first kind of shocked everyone, who was kind of already seeing fault lines form, and they already knew that there was an issue with the social justice movement, and then

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David Platt preached this sermon at T4G in 2018, and a bunch of people, myself included, said, yep, he's on the wrong side of this.

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I want to go back to that sermon, because I listened to it recently, and I listened to it carefully, and I think

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I know why I would, and not just me, but many others, would put David Platt in the category of the

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Judaizers, or the Pharisees, or false teachers, and so I want to walk everyone down the garden path for a moment, and explain to you why that is.

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It's not just that he's a Marxist, it's not just that he's ignorant, it's not just that he's got a few things that he, a few quirky ideas, it's that he actually, fundamentally, he preaches false teaching, and he's done so over the course of years, with correction, and I know that, because people have reached out to me.

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He has been corrected numerous times, he doubles down. He is not open to correction on this.

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So I want to answer this question as simply as I can. Again, lots more can be added to this, but I'm trying to do it simply here for everyone, and I have the chapters and the verses, so you can go check it out yourself.

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Don't listen to me, don't take my word for it, right? Go check it out for yourself. The sermon's available, it's short, it's an hour long, the whole thing, but the sermon's like 50 minutes, 50, maybe an hour, maybe it is an hour.

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But you can actually go, and you can listen to it, and you can think, okay, is what John's saying true here? And check it out for yourself.

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So I'm gonna give you my breakdown of the sermon, and this will hopefully answer the question.

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The sermon is called Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters, Racism and Our Need for Repentance. And I'm gonna blow this up, so for those watching, you can see exactly, as I get into it, what

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I'm talking about here. The entire speech is predicated on the idea that those in the room at the T4G conference are guilty of racism and need to repent.

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Otherwise, it wouldn't have the title it does, Our Need for Repentance. It literally says that in the title. We need to repent, we're sinning somehow, right?

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He's just saying everyone, or a majority of people in the room at T4G need to repent. It's characterizing this place, this evangelical session that he, this room filled with evangelicals, they're in sin somehow.

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And he says in a minute, and by the way, I'm not gonna keep going over the timestamp, but I put the timestamps here to be helpful for you.

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So if you're trying to talk to someone who likes David Platt a lot, you don't have to even reference me.

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You don't have to come to this video. I realize sometimes when you send something of mine where I've commented to other people, sometimes it's very helpful, but other times, there's been a lot of vilification of me.

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And that goes for AD Robles, it goes for Founders Ministries, it goes for Voti, it goes for anyone who's taking this on.

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There's always a pile of things that people will try to use to discredit. So you don't have to take my word for it. I'm giving you the info right here.

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You can be the source. You can say, okay, this is what he said at this timestamp, right? And if you're a patron, you're gonna get this

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PowerPoint. It's gonna be, you can download it. So link to Patreon is in the info section, but you can download this and then you'll have chapter and verse right there.

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So let's get into it. David Platt says, we in a sinful world have blind spots that we cannot see on our own.

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And I fear that I, that we don't really want to see them. Well, that sounds pretty serious.

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We have some sin that we don't see and because we don't, we're willfully burying our heads in the sand like ostriches.

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And I think he includes himself in this to soften the blow. Kind of the we kind of makes it so he's not just accusing one, but he does get into accusing certain people groups in this.

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He does, he can't really help himself. And we'll get into it. But this is the whole premise of the sermon.

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We have blind spots. We don't want to see them. We're rebellious. We need repentance. And so what he does first is he compares the room, the

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T4G conference attendees to the Jews in Amos who are disobedient. He says in minute nine, these aren't

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Bible verses. These are timestamps, minute nine, second 10. You think you will be safe, but you will not when

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God judges. I don't wanna put your will not, you will not when God judges. And he says, minute 13, they, meaning the

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Jews in Amos, denied sin, they ignored injustice and they refused to repent. Now this is a parallel he's drawing.

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He's saying, this is the room at T4G. You guys, you pastors who showed up for this, you're just like these people.

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You're denying sin, you're ignoring injustice, you're refusing to repent. And he says, I'm applying this text to the historic and current injustice associated with the black -white divide in the

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United States. So the fact that there's a black -white divide, there's neighborhoods that are black, neighborhoods that are white, churches that are black, churches that are white, those kinds of things.

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That state of affairs, that condition that we live in, some of us do, some of us don't, by the way, that condition though is what he's talking about.

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And he's saying that because that exists, we are all guilty. We are all guilty just like the

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Jews in Amos were because the Jews in Amos were not pursuing justice. Now look, this is personal indictments against a people.

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This is people personally were doing something. They were committing sins. They were contributing to actual injustice, treating people that were vulnerable in ways that were evil.

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People doing this actual actions, wasn't just passively accepting a system or passively accepting a state of affairs or living within the boundaries of some kind of system that they were born into that had abuses within it or people that fell between the cracks or it wasn't that.

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It was they were actively going out and they were doing unjust things. That's what was going on in Amos. And look,

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I know we could go into a lot more detail, go into the passage. I'm just trying to give you the brief sketch here of why this doesn't fit.

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He's saying this to a room of people he doesn't know and he's applying it to them and saying, you're the problem.

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You're in sin because you're doing what the Jews did in Amos. You're going out and you're oppressing people. Well, like the

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Jews in Amos did. Well, how so? How are they oppressing people? And this is where we get into the fact that David Platt believes that because a disparity exists, therefore we're all complicit in abuse.

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And he starts out with, what is racism? What is it? We know the critical race theory definition that assumes that you have to have power to be racist, minorities and can't be racist to some extent.

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I mean, there's all sorts of things attached to it now. The fact that a disparity exists means there's racism of some kind.

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It's just power relationships though. That's what it really breaks down into. Racism is power, these power relationships. It's an external thing.

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It's not an internal thing of the heart necessarily. It's an external state of affairs. And David Platt goes down the same road. And this is where I would suggest and I would encourage you to start thinking as I go through this of what sin is.

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Is sin something? Now it demonstrates itself externally, but is sin something that is of the heart?

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At the root base of what sin is, definitionally, what is it? It is something that comes from inside a man.

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That's what Jesus said. Sin comes from within. It is a motivation of the heart. Yes, it proceeds into action.

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You have greed and then that greed manifests itself in stealing. You have lust, it manifests itself in adultery.

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God judges the intentions of the heart, right? This is where sin is. David Platt though, makes an argument in this that it's, yeah, not really.

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I mean, it can be that, but you know what? You can kind of not be racist in your heart. You don't think you are, you don't hate anyone, but because you're living in this racialized system and you're not doing enough to combat it, yeah, you're in sin.

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You're just like the Jews in Amos. That's kind of where, that's where he goes. It's not even kind of, that's where he goes. So what is racism?

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Minute 39, he says, he assumes that racism and racial disparities are the same thing. Now, this is where you should start saying, well, you know, it seems like some critical race theory stuff got into this because, or new left thinking at the very least.

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Why would you assume racism and racial disparities are the same thing? Why would you assume that? You can have a racial disparity.

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Like, I mean, I've pointed this out many times. Those in Appalachia, right? Living in Appalachia, primarily white people, seven of the 10 leading causes of death are the highest in that region.

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Poverty, off the charts. Access to healthcare, off the charts. Lack of access, I should say. The joblessness, the, you know, health and all the disparities you would wanna go to just about there.

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Appalachia has them. And is that, does that mean that everyone's in sin because they're not saying

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Appalachian lives matter? They're not going out and they're not trying to correct these disparities? No, apparently not.

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But this one protected, authorized disparity that everyone's supposed to care about.

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That is a sin, right? So there's a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to this. I mean, you could find disparities in everything.

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Firstborn sons versus, or firstborn children versus the rest of the children. Firstborn children have certain advantages.

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I mean, Thomas Sowell has pointed this out in his book. What's the name of it? His book on disparities, discrimination and disparities,

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I think it's called, something like that. Anyway, he goes through a whole host of these. So anytime there's a disparity, does that mean there's oppression?

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And that means if you're not doing anything about, I mean, your whole life would be filled with just trying to combat disparities and you would be in sin if you didn't do it.

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I mean, that's kind of where this logic leads, but that can't be the case. That can't be the case that if racism is a sin, and I like to use the biblical terms, right?

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Like if we're gonna talk about this, let's talk about partiality based on ethnicity. Partiality, the sin of partiality is not, it's not just about a disparity.

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It's not just a disparity exists and you're not doing anything. Therefore you're guilty of the sin of partiality. It's show me where you find that in scripture.

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It's, you need to stand up for equality before the law, the rights of the poor, these kinds of things.

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You need to as much as you possibly can, but not everyone has the same platform.

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Not everyone lives in the same place. Not everyone has the same opportunities to make those stands. And it doesn't mean someone's guilty if they're not the ones that are behind and actively participating in some kind of an injustice.

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And not all disparities are the result of injustice. So there's so much packed into this that just gets assumed.

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And it's all the social justice stuff. It works, it's completely used by Marxists to try to just simplify and categorize these very hard and fast lines that exists between categories, social locations of people to vilify one group and then to raise up another group as pure as the driven snow because they're victims or something like that.

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That's kind of, that's how this logic lends itself or is applied by secular social justice activists.

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And you can see David Platt's affected by them. And so he points out a bunch of disparities, unemployment, income, infant mortality, mothers dying in childbirth, murders, education, jobs.

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Black people all are on, they're getting the short end of the stick. Therefore this is racism, right?

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This is David Platt's argument. He talks about how white Christians are more conservative than black Christians, liberal, and this contributes to racism.

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So, I mean, even that, even the fact that black people tend to vote more Democrat and tend to think more in progressive terms and white

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Christians tend to not be that way. Well, that's a problem. That has to be eliminated somehow. So how does that eliminate it?

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I mean, you could say, well, black Christians should all become conservatives, right? That would eliminate it, right? Well, I don't think he'd agree with that.

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There, so this, I think what David Platt wants to get at is that we should just downplay those disagreements somehow.

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They're not as important or something. They're just, you know, the unity of the church can exist and you don't have to get into this stuff.

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The problem is, and David Platt doesn't seem to realize this, neither does Tim Keller, that there's hundreds and centuries really of British common law shaped by Christian assumptions that was applied to the

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United States in our founding documents. And this is a Christian understanding of politics.

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It's not perfect, it's men over time, but you have a side that does represent

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Christianity more. And it's because of centuries of crafting, et cetera.

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So the question should really be not, hey, is there a difference of opinion? And therefore, if there's a difference of opinion, oh my goodness, this is terrible.

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It should be, what's the right thing to think? What's the right thing to do? How should we think politically? But he doesn't get there.

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He talks about, this is a direct quote from him. It matters in our country, whether one is white or black. Now we don't want it to matter,

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I don't think, which is why we try to convince ourselves it doesn't matter. We think to ourselves, I don't hold prejudice towards black or white people.

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I'm not racist. So racism is not my problem, but this is where we need to see that racism is my problem.

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It's all of our problem. We are immersed in it. Okay, well, this is critical race theory.

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This is one of the assumptions of it, that racism is normative, that it is everywhere.

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You look on the McDonald's menu, there's racism. You look at the Wendy's menu, it's racism, Taco Bell racism, every single facet of society immersed in it.

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And that it's just, there's no escaping it because it's all about power relationships. So this is, David Platt assumes an incorrect definition of what sin is.

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And this is where I think the false teaching comes in. When you start assuming that it's a disparity equals complicity, just because it exists, you're complicit in it, and that a disparity is sin, that external reality is sin, then you're not thinking biblically anymore.

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Sin comes from the heart. It starts in the heart. And if you don't have a sinful heart and you're not doing sinful things, you are not in sin.

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And this creates a problem down the road. And I'll talk about it as we go through this. So here's more about the sin of racism.

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How does it manifest itself? For those who are still, you know, you're listening to what I'm saying. You've listened to David Platt. You're still confused.

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This is gonna help clear some of it up. It's failing, failing to acknowledge race. He says, individually, we don't have a problem with someone because of their ethnicity.

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We think, even say that we're colorblind, that it doesn't matter to us if someone is black or white, when in reality, it does matter to, in our culture today, whether someone is black or white.

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It does matter, and we need to realize it matters. So if you just are colorblind, you say, look,

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I don't see race. I'm not seeing that. We're all part of the human race. You're in sin, basically.

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That's the insinuation in this. You're failing to acknowledge race. How about this? You're failing to be anti -racist. Direct quotes.

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Are we now, he says, slow to speak and work against racial injustice around us? And I am convinced the answer to that question is a resounding yes.

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And he gives a dramatic pause here. So everyone knows he's very serious about this. He says, we can't be comfortable as a people of God with a clear white -black divide in our country, and we can't be content with deepening that divide in our church.

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It is not just, and it is not right, and we will not be found to be worshiping God if we ignore injustice. He says, lack of civil rights is a stain.

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So it's the failing. It's the, you didn't participate. You are not participating in trying to somehow get rid of this black -white divide.

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I mean, does this apply to musical genres too? Is it terrible that certain people listen to certain kinds of music and like certain hobbies?

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You know, where do we go with this? Is that all just a sin? And if you live and you're comfortable with it, or you just don't think about it, or you don't see color, or you're not doing anything hateful or not acting in an impartial way, but you just allow this to happen, you're somehow in sin?

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I mean, this will just, this indicts everyone. Everyone is just guilty of this.

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And by the way, they would be guilty 24 seven. As long as these disparities exist, they're guilty. They're, you'd have to repent and the next second, repent again.

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You didn't do enough. You never do enough. This is all law guys and no grace. That's what this is. Failing again to be diverse.

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Failing, this is part of the sin of racism. Why? He says, why are the churches I've been a part of and led been so white?

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Why is it that this conference is so white? Platt also guilts pastors for not quoting other pastors or theologians of different ethnicities.

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So if you're a pastor and your illustrations are Charles Spurgeon and John MacArthur, oh, you're not diversifying your library.

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Platt guilts people for liking others that are like them. They like being around people that are like them.

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You know what? I like going fishing with people who like to fish, right? I like going golfing with people who like to golf.

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I remember I was at a church that quoted Russell Moore, this was in Lynchburg, outside of Lynchburg a few years ago, maybe now a year and a half ago,

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I guess. And I went there because they had a drive -in service and the church I had been attending wasn't open.

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And so I decided, okay, I'm gonna go to this church. They have a drive -in service. And the pastor starts guilting his entire congregation out in the middle of the country because they're not hanging out with people that are ethnic minorities.

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And he went farther. He said, you shouldn't be just spending time with people who like to do the things you do.

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You should be spending time with people who don't like to do the things or who do other things that you don't do.

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And I'm thinking like, this is not a natural way to live. No one really, I mean, this is a weird thing to say.

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People who do certain things do it with other people who like to do those certain things. If you like fishing and you don't like golf and someone else likes to golf and not fishing, maybe there's a connection that binds you together to do that.

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You know, maybe you wanna try something new. Maybe there's a family connection. Maybe they're friends. Maybe you wanna get to know them better for whatever reason.

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They're business partners. I don't know. But just, it's not a moral thing in and of itself.

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It is right to do, to go outside of your comfort zone, so to speak, or to go outside of what you enjoy doing to reach people who like doing other things.

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That's not just, it's not like that's the right thing to do and it's wrong if you go fishing with other people who like to go fishing.

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In fact, I would submit to you, it makes a whole lot more sense to reach out to the people who have something in common with you.

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Yeah, to reach out to the people that are your neighbors, that live near you, to reach out to the people that share certain hobbies with you.

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They're gonna be more likely to listen to you because they have something in common with you and that helps build trust. This should not be rocket science.

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But David Platt, and more broadly speaking, the social justice movement seems to vilify that kind of thing.

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Loving the things that are familiar, giving them preference, that's wrong. And in fact, that's actually natural.

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There's nothing wrong about it. It's not sinful to do that. And so people that are culturally similar, they're gonna tend to hang out.

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And there's nothing wrong with that. But there's an insinuation here that no, even in our churches, right?

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I went to a black church a few weeks ago and I loved it, actually. I felt like I could even be part of that church, possibly.

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I don't know enough about their theology, but look, I wouldn't be going there if I went there to change everything around.

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I wouldn't be going there because, look, my way's better and I'm gonna, you gotta accept everything I do. I realize they have their own thing going there.

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And there's a reason that they exist where they exist and they do what they do. It is different than a lot of the other churches.

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Lutheran church, different than the Presbyterian, different than the Baptist. There's different ways, not just theologically, you know, that's a big divide, but there's different ways of also expressing yourself in preaching and singing, all of that.

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And there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with having different cultures wanting to express things in a little bit of a different way because of their culture.

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David Platt would vilify this kind of thing, especially if you're white. Failing to be diverse.

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Why are the churches I've been a part of and led been so white, he says? That's failing to be diverse. There's nothing sinful about that, necessarily.

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Now, if it's because we have a sign that says only white people can come here, because, you know, for whatever reason, they're the only ones that can practice true

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Christianity or because they're superior in some way, that would be sinful.

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But, you know, as far as I know, I've never been in a church like that. So anyway, let's keep going here.

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Platt guilts pastors for favoring topics white people want to talk about. He says, the church today is one of the most segregated institutions in our country.

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Over 95 % of white Americans attend predominantly white churches. Over 90 % of African Americans attend predominantly black churches.

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He says, pastors, instead of bridging the racial divide in our country are currently widening it and the racial divide, this is a fact.

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He says, could it be that as much as we think of the church as a force for countering racism, right now the church is actually a force for continuing it.

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And in this way, I wonder whether looking out there for all the reasons behind racism, we actually need to start looking in here.

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So this is what racism is. Hey, there's a, look, this place looks so white.

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There must be a sin going on. That's gotta be it. It's gotta be a sin. And it's gotta be, and these people must all be guilty in the same way the

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Jews in Amos were guilty. I mean, that's pretty damning stuff. The solution, what's the solution for David Platt?

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Followers of Christ, regardless of skin color, have one father as one family and one household with no dividing walls of hostility.

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And listen to this, based on ethnic diversity. So he has his commands he brings, pursue diversity.

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This is where the law gets smuggled in. His social justice law. This is where David Platt's being like a

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Pharisee. You have to pursue diversity. And it's not that, hey, look, all this stuff is based on our common identity in Christ.

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He may say that, and I'm sure he says that in other sermons, but he says it's actually based on ethnic diversity. I mean, this is weird language, guys, social justice language.

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We're followers of Christ, regardless of skin color, of one father, one family, one household with no dividing walls of hostility, based on ethnic diversity.

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That's what it's all based on, apparently. He says, live in true multi -ethnic community.

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So let's do this, he says, let's pursue multi -ethnic community in our lives, in our families. It's been said that the most segregated place in America is not actually the church, but the dinner table.

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So look, even if you get your church diversified, and I do go to a very diverse church, not because they pursue diversity, just because they preach the gospel, but let's just say you go to a very diverse church.

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Hey, if your dinner table isn't diverse, you've still got a problem. You're still just guilty like those

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Jews in Amos for forwarding oppression. I mean, what does this even look like? I guess you just got to invite people over that are different.

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I guess maybe that's what he's saying. You have to adopt people so that, I mean, I don't, this is just, this is insane because this is not biblical at all.

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There's nothing biblical about this command that you show me in the Bible where it says to pursue diversity in the sense that David Platt and social justice activists are saying to pursue it, to make it the purpose.

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That's one of the problems. No, diversity can be an effect of preaching the truth of the gospel. It's not the purpose though.

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That's not what you're, it's not you're trying to achieve this. It's that, hey, we achieve this because we were trying to achieve something else. Sinners being saved by grace, being disciples of Christ, knowing the gospel, living the gospel, or I should say living the law of God.

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This is what the church is about, these kinds of things. And yeah, you can get diversity when you pursue those things because there's people that God calls from all kinds of different social locations if you want to use that term.

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But this is not something that is the banner that you need to fly outside your church that says the reason for our existence is to pursue diversity.

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Or it's, what I'm saying is it's not an end in and of itself. Yes, at the end of time and revelation,

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God's going to have every tribe, tongue, and nation. That's something he does. And that's in the kingdom to come.

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If you live in Iowa and you don't have, you know, any people other than Germans living in your town, really, you know, what does that mean?

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You're just, you can deal with the people that are around you. And sometimes, you know, they're going to be attracted to a different,

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I mean, look, we got a Chinese church down the street from me. Is that a sin? Is that wrong?

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Is that evil? No, it's going to be a little different there.

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And they can still be my brothers and sisters in Christ. Let's keep going here though, because that's not the only thing he says.

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He says you got to listen, right? This is where standpoint theory often comes in. Let's listen to and learn from one another, specifically from others who don't look like you.

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He assumes the reasons for attributing different causes to racial disparities is due to different ethnicities, not culture or conditioning.

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So this is very key. David Platt, he says this, this is in Timestamp Minute 40, that he basically says that, look, the reason you got to listen to other people of different ethnicities is because they're different, or I'm sorry, the reason that you have to, the reason that some people think differently about racial disparities is because they're from different ethnic backgrounds.

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So if you're black and you would assume that, look, the reason that there's an income gap is not because of failure to work.

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It's not because of laziness. It's because of racism or whatever, that kind of thing.

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That is because, well, because you're a different ethnicity. That's why you think that way. And to me, this just cries standpoint epistemology, because it's not culture, it's not conditioning.

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It's not that you've been told this your whole life. It's not that the public schools have taught this. It's not that, because look, a lot of white people think that too in a liberal elite circles.

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If you go across the board and you're looking at all people considered white, then maybe they think that it's due more to personal decisions.

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And that's why there's an income gap and that kind of thing. But look, the people who devise these ideas, they weren't all

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African -Americans or black people or minorities. There's a lot of people with a lot of money who think this and started and put a lot of money behind other people thinking this way.

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So it's just David Platt's reasoning is so flawed. He just thinks that, oh, you know, people think differently because they're different ethnicities.

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You know, no, that's not necessarily the case. It's culture, it's conditioning, a lot of it. And listening to and learning from one another, sure, we can all do that, but it's because someone's got something to teach you.

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And it could be drawing from their experience. It could be from learning, reading that they've done.

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But it's not just because they don't look like you that they automatically are gonna have wisdom that you don't have access to.

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All right, and then the next thing is, and this is the point he says, the point of all of this, his whole talk really, it's, and he doesn't use this term, but what he's getting at is he wants a multi -ethnic church.

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That's the whole point, but it's really a multi -political church is what he wants. He wants a church and he talks about this.

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And you can read his book where he talks about this too on voting. He wants Republicans and Democrats to basically be comfortable being together in the same church.

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And this is, a lot of people are concerned about this with the mandates over the vaccines. They're concerned about this over BLM.

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They just wanna keep their church together. Please don't split. Let's downgrade all these things to secondary issues so we don't split.

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Unfortunately, behind a lot of this are assumptions that are primary. And I'm showing you that in David Platt's thinking because he's calling sin things that the

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Bible does not call sin. He's adding law that the Bible does not have, that does not teach. And he kind of insinuates that this is all, somehow, this is very damning stuff if you're failing in any of these.

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If you're sinning in the way he says you're sinning, if you're failing to pursue diversity in the way he wants, you're just like the

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Jews in Amos. I mean, you're in judgment of damnation, basically. I mean, there's strong insinuations here, strong.

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Let's not forget. And yeah, he gives the gospel at the end, but it's very confusing to people because it's like, wait a minute, okay, but you just compared us to people who are under judgment and God's rejecting their worship and all this stuff.

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And that's what David Platt says. He's rejecting our worship, that we're in danger of it because we're forwarding oppression here.

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But fortunately, are we Christians? Are we not Christians? You're left scratching your head after a sermon like this.

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What are we? That's, at best, confusion, but I think I will go this step further.

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I'd say this is false teaching. This is purposely introducing categories.

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And it's not just, oh, I think that's sin and you don't think it's sin. This is a whole category of sin.

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This has many applications if you take it to its logical conclusion. If you can just passively sit and not do enough, according to who, who's saying what enough is, but not do enough to right a disparity, to make a disparity go away, that you're somehow in sin and guilty of potential damnation.

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I'm sorry, that's false teaching. If you don't do these list of works, these are the things that are gonna solve the problem.

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These are the things that you can do to get out of it. I'm sorry. I don't have another word for it.

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I don't know what to call it other than false teaching. And what is a false teacher? It's someone who gives false teaching.

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And I realize all of us, at times, have probably said things that we don't, maybe could be considered that.

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Or we said something that, okay, this was a little, I mean, James White says this about the Trinity. A lot of Christians, if you ask them to define the

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Trinity, they'd probably say something that was heretical. Not really even realizing it, not thinking about it so much.

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But if you've been given time, if you've done this over and over, people have corrected you and you keep doing this, and I'll submit to you,

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David Platt keeps doing this, then what do you call someone who gives this kind of false teaching? So that's really why, this is,

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I think, at a base level, a very basic, basic, basic level, what many social justice advocates in the church and evangelicalism are doing.

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They are forwarding this kind of thing, different category of sin. People are guilty of it and failing to repent of it.

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Which, I mean, look, if you're failing to repent of something, and this is something that characterized your entire life, it characterizes the church, and you're just living in this constant state of sin, then that's a very serious thing.

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What does 1 John say about that? That lifestyle of sin. And that's what

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David Platt is saying, that you're in a lifestyle of sin. If these disparities exist and you're just not doing enough, which, and you'll be on the hamster wheel forever trying to figure out what enough is.

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This is Phariseeism. It's what the Pharisees did. I mean, do you feel like Jesus' burden is light after something like this?

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No, you feel burdened down with the weight of the law that David Platt is putting on you. And he is one of the more mild social justice advocates in Christianity.

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That's why I wanted to use him as an example, because so many of the other ones, I can point to other things that are heretical in their teaching, but they're at the very basic level, someone who's just dipping their toe into the social justice stuff.

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They're not going as far as the beady. They're not saying, like, we should all have a reparations thing, right? They're not saying there's no absolute truth.

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They're not doing the crazy things, but they're just, they're doing this. They're changing sin, they're twisting sin.

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They're changing what it is. It's not even something that necessarily flows out of the heart. It's something that's out there externally.

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And if you're, and the heart, I guess, connection would be just, you're not doing enough to change the status quo that's out there, that isn't necessarily even a sinful status quo in every sense of the word.

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Maybe it is somewhere, but it's so broad here that just the fact that there is a gathering that could be black and a gathering that could be white, that's enough.

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Or a wage gap or something, that's enough. And you never said anything about it. You never, well, whose rule is that?

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That you have to be an activist against these things in order to even be a faithful Christian.

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So that's the issue. And I hope that was clear for people who are trying to figure this out, who are

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Christians. I'm making this, again, for Christians who kind of, you understand basically what the gospel is. You understand what social justice is.

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But this is at a basic level what's going on in the church.

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So I wanted to make that example. I hope that helps you out. Final note here, I just wanted to mention, so some of you saw my video where I kind of critiqued

37:28

Todd Friel, for lack of a better term, kind of defending David Platt as a Christian and as, you know, he's not doing anything heretical, he's not a false teacher, that kind of thing.

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I made that video a few weeks ago, maybe now a month ago. Todd Friel, I just want to let you all know, he did reach out to me, sent me a very nice email, and I sent him a very nice email back.

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And I did finally call him back a few days ago. I've been so busy, I haven't had a chance, but I did call him, and I'm hoping that we can talk maybe later this week about this stuff.

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And I'll bring up what I just talked about if we do get a chance to talk. But I don't consider Todd Friel by any stretch of the imagination a false teacher.

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I just disagree with him about the way he categorizes David Platt. And so, anyway,

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I just want to let all of you know that. A few people have asked me, have you reached out to Todd? And actually, Todd reached out to me.

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So, and he's very kind, and that's all very positive.

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So I just wanted everyone to know that. All right, more coming later this week. Hope that was helpful to some of you. God bless. Until next time, bye now.