The False Gospel of "The Gospel in Chairs"

Hey there Fighting for the Faith YouTube listener, I want to explain what it is that you're about to listen to.

I've cut a couple of sections out of the July 16th, 2013 episode of Fighting for the

Faith and put them together. So what you're going to be listening to is not an entire episode, but you're going to be listening to two segments of my program that work together.

The monologue from the 16th, as well as the sermon review. What you're going to be listening to, it's really important that you pay attention, take notes and watch what happens in this program.

The reason being is because within Evangelicalism for a long time now, especially in the emergent movement but it's moved into the mainstream, there has been a full -out assault against the doctrine of Christ's penal substitutionary atonement.

That Christ was pierced for our transgressions, that he was bruised for our iniquities. And it's now spread into the mainstream.

So what you're going to listen to in this YouTube edition of my radio program is my monologue from the 16th where I lay out the biblical foundations of Christ's penal substitutionary atonement.

And then you're going to be listening to a sermon preached by Brian Zond, it's like the

Gospel in Chairs, although he calls it the Beautiful Gospel. The presentation actually is well known as called the

Gospel in Chairs. And he preached this at Jonathan Martin's church called Renovatus in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And of course, Jonathan Martin just has a new book out called Prototype, and I've been saying this guy is kind of like the new

Rob Bell, trust me, that's exactly what's going on here. And he's also very good friends with very high -placed people in the seeker -driven movement including

Stephen Furtick. So this full -out assault attack against the biblical gospel, this isn't just Brian Zond engaging in it, there's other people who are engaging in it as well due to their friendship and promotion of men like Jonathan Martin.

So this is a super important episode of Fighting for the Faith here on YouTube. I've made it easy for you to share with friends so that they can be warned against the attack against the biblical gospel.

And so without any further ado, let's dive right into it. Here's the program. It's time for another edition of Fighting for the

Faith. Tuesday, July 16th, 2013. Last second edits here.

Thank you for tuning in. You're listening to Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment, the goal of which, help you to think biblically, help you to think critically, and help you compare what people are saying in the name of God to the

Word of God. There's no shortage of crazy things being said out there, and we take the time to stop and listen.

Now let's kind of talk about the discernment scale, if you would.

When it comes to sound biblical doctrine, okay, there's certain misbeliefs or false teachings which, although dangerous, do not in and of themselves necessitate that the person is a full -blown heretic.

And generally when we talk about somebody being a full -blown heretic, we're referring to one of the major heresies that Christianity has fought in the past, and generally we reserve the heresy title, the flat -out heretic title, to those who teach a different God, even though their

God is named Jesus, or those who teach a different gospel. And those would be kind of the major ideas there.

Now we've also, in church history, we've fought battles where Pelagius, because his doctrine affected the gospel, made it so that it changed its nature, even though the core nugget in his heresy was a denial of the doctrine of original sin, if you got the problem wrong then you're not going to get the solution correct either, and so that impacts the gospel.

So the idea is that even if you're wrong on, say, the doctrine of baptism, although it doesn't make any sense to me why people still can't quite figure this out, considering the fact that Scripture is actually really clear as to what baptism is, who's doing it, what it's for, and what it accomplishes.

The primary text actually spelled this out clearly. But you look at a passage from the

Book of Acts where Apollos was not, well, he didn't quite get the baptism thing correctly, and so rather than consider

Apollos to be a heretic, his Christian brothers Aquila and Priscilla took him aside and said, you know, let's teach you what baptism is, and they taught him more accurately as to what baptism is.

So the idea is that if you get the baptism doctrine wrong, it doesn't necessarily throw you into the heretic bin, but there are certain doctrines that do throw you into the heretic bin and would call down biblical anathemas on you.

For instance, if you are teaching a different gospel, then you come under the anathemas, the curses that are pronounced in Scripture in Galatians chapter 1.

Now the reason I'm bringing this up today is because when we get to the sermon review today, when we get to the sermon review, we're going to be listening to a quote, sermon that actually crosses the line from not just error, but into rank heresy.

It's a different gospel. Now let me read to you what the Apostle Paul wrote, Galatians chapter 1.

I'll start at verse 6. We'll dispense with the pleasantries in the first five verses of the book of Galatians.

Here's what it says, Paul writing, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says to the churches in Galatia, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel that is contrary to the one that we preached, let him be a curse, anathema.

The Greek word is anathema, and it means damned. It's an eternal damnation curse kind of thing.

And since they didn't have bold and italic letters and didn't have word processors, in order to make a point back in the ancient days, you would repeat yourself because you didn't have the ability to bold and underline.

That was not a standard convention then. So Paul makes it again. He says, as we've said before, so now

I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one that you received, let him be anathema, accursed, damned, all right?

So the idea is this, is that certain errors are so grievous, they are so far off the mark that they put you outside of Christianity.

It doesn't matter if you attend a church with the word Jesus or Christian on the front marquee.

Doesn't matter. If what you're teaching is a different gospel, that, according to Scripture, brings you under the curse, under the anathema that are pronounced here in Galatians chapter one.

Now, when it comes to understanding, well, what is the gospel that the Apostle Paul preached?

Well, I'm glad you asked. Scripture doesn't leave us wondering as to what the gospel is, okay?

Nor does it leave us wondering what the gospel is that the Apostle Paul preached. Here's what it says, 1

Corinthians chapter 15, verse one. By the way, I'm going to go back to Galatians in a minute here, but Paul writing to the church in Corinth reminds them of the gospel he preached.

Listen to his words here. Verse one, chapter 15, now I would remind you, brothers of the gospel,

I preach to you. Aha! Very simple, okay? So yeah, this falls under the hermeneutical principle of Scripture interprets

Scripture. Clear passages always govern unclear, and so the

Apostle Paul writing to the churches in Galatia says that even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than the one already preached, let him be anathema.

As we've said before, so I say again, if anyone is preaching a gospel contrary to the one we preached, let him be anathema, damned, cursed, right?

And so Paul writing to the church in Corinth actually reminds them of the gospel he preached. No need to guess.

No need to sit there and go, I wonder what the gospel is that Paul preached.

It's lost to history. We'll never know. No, actually, Scripture, you know,

God, the Holy Spirit had the Apostle Paul inspired him to write this. Now I would remind you, brothers of the gospel that I preached to you, which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved.

If you hold fast to the word that I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what

I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

And then he appeared to Cephas and to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

And then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

Okay. So what is the gospel? Gospel in a nutshell is this little creed here found in 1

Corinthians chapter 15. For I, you know, for what I received,

I also passed on to you that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

Okay. So the idea here is Christ died for our sins. What does that mean?

What does it mean that Christ died for our sins? Well, luckily, we don't have to guess on that either, because the scriptures make it clear what that means.

I would point you to, for instance, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, where we've got this wonderful dialogue here going on regarding the fact that we as Christians have been given the ministry of reconciliation.

So here's what the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 wrote.

He says, From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, verse 16. For even though we once regarded

Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old is past, and behold, the new has come.

All of this is from God. God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God is making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God, who for our sake he made him,

Jesus, to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is what is revealed also in the Old Testament book of Isaiah chapter 53, which says this,

Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground, he had no form or majesty that we should look on him, and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he, this is the suffering servant, Jesus, has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement, or you can even translate this

Hebrew word musar as punishment. Upon him was the punishment that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him, catch that talk here, the

Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Now, here in verse 6 where it says the

Lord has laid on him, Jesus, the suffering servant, on him the iniquity of us all, this is referring specifically now to, this is the type of talk that you see in the book of Leviticus where God is talking about the

Day of Atonement, where the priest puts his, you know, the high priest puts his hands over the sacrifice and lays on the sacrifice the sins of the people of Israel.

That same idea is now expressed here in Isaiah chapter 53 where Christ is pierced for our transgressions, but he didn't commit any sins, and yet 2

Corinthians 5 says God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

So the idea here is that Christ is our atonement, Christ propitiates the wrath of God, other scriptures bear this out, and by the way, if you ever are wondering, well, how do we as Christians know for sure that Isaiah 53 is written about Jesus?

The answer to the question is, again, scripture interprets scripture, and I would point you to the book of Acts chapter 8.

The book of Acts chapter 8, we have this wonderful story starting at verse 26 that reads this way.

Now, an angel of the Lord said to Philip, rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

This is a desert place, and he rose and went, and there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch of the court official of Candace, queen of the

Ethiopians, who was in charge of all of her treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship, and he was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet

Isaiah. And the spirit said to Philip, go over and join his chariot.

So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, do you understand what you are reading?

And he said, well, how can I unless someone guides me? And so he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Now the passage of scripture that he was reading was this, like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearers is silent.

So he who opens not his mouth in humiliation, justice was denied him, and who can describe his generation?

For his life is taken away from the earth. Well, this is Isaiah, this is starting at Isaiah chapter 53, verse 7 and 8.

I didn't read those, but if I had continued reading verses 7 and 8, you would recognize that what I'm, you know, what was being read here was again,

Isaiah chapter 53. So and here's what it says in verse 34.

So he's reading Isaiah 53. He's reading that passage. And the eunuch said to Philip, about whom

I ask you, does the prophet say this about himself or about someone else?

Great question. So then Philip opened his mouth and beginning with this scripture, he told them, him the good news about Jesus.

So who does Philip say Isaiah 53 is about? It's about Jesus. And that's what he taught the

Ethiopian eunuch. And after preaching the gospel to him from the book of Isaiah chapter 53, as well as other places, here's what it says.

And as they were going along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, see, here is water. What prevents me from being baptized?

And he commanded the chariot to stop and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.

And when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away and the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing.

So what happens as a result of the preaching of the good news that he was pierced for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, or as Paul says,

God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that we might be the righteousness of God for God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

He was pierced for our transgressions. Christ was crucified for our sins. Well, that's the gospel.

And that's the good news. It's all about, if you really were to boil it all down, what people call substitution.

Now there's a couple of different theological phrases that people refer to when they talk about this. They refer to it as penal substitution, or they can talk about the vicarious atonement, what

Christ was basically our substitute. God was in Christ reconciling the world to him. God made him to be sin who knew no sin.

So here's the idea, is that in today's modern evangelicalism, this good news that Christ died for our sins is under attack.

It's been under attack in the mainstream of evangelicalism for a long time.

But if you've listened to Fighting for the Faith for any length of time, then you know that I kind of work from a theory.

And here's the theory that I work from, is that there's the emerging church, less emergent church, although there's differences, okay?

The emerging emergent church kind of represents the new postmodern way of understanding

Christianity from a postmodern context. And there have been guys, young leaders, who have received book deals and invitations to speak at major conferences and have had videos made.

Guys like Tony Jones, Doug Padgett, Rob Bell, and others, these young up -and -comers.

And what has happened is that guys who were part of the emergent church 1 .0,

I would point you to Rob Bell, Tony Jones, and Brian McLaren, and Doug Padgett as being examples of that, what happened is that they were no longer able to put on the false front that they were evangelicals, and their liberal, really liberal attacks against sound

Christian doctrine became so apparent that it became impossible for anyone to deny that that is what was going on and that is what they were doing.

As a result, guys like Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and Doug Padgett, and Rob Bell don't get invited to the mainstream evangelical conferences anymore.

They don't get invited to speak at Willow Creek and things like that because the folks at Willow Creek don't want everybody to know that they're as liberal as those guys.

They want to be able to kind of be able to put on the facade that they're mainstream evangelical all the while they're trying to move people to the extreme left.

So as a result of it, every few years the emergent church fields a new team, and they've got new players on their team.

Now recently I reviewed a sermon by Jonathan Martin. He's the guy who has the new book out called

Prototype, and I reviewed one of the sermons that he did on the book Prototype in order to demonstrate the biblical flaws, if you can even call it biblical,

I mean major flaws in his thinking. Well as it has turned out during the last part of my vacation,

Jonathan Martin invited a gentleman to come preach at his church, and that guy's name is

Brian Zond. And let's just put it this way. According to Jonathan Martin, Zond is like one of his major influencers, and Zond this past Sunday at Renovatus preached a sermon called

A Beautiful Gospel, and it was a full -on attack against the biblical doctrine of penal substitution, absolute full -on attack.

And as a result of this attack, it's come to my attention now that Jonathan Martin is not only an error, but he's absolutely, if this is what he's putting forward as the gospel, he's a heretic.

He's a heretic of the stripe that we saw ten years ago with Rob Bell and Tony Jones and Doug Padgett.

These are guys who have an evangelical facade, but behind the facade is a theology that is aggressively anti -biblical, anti -what -the -Bible -teaches -regarding -what -the -gospel -message -is, and it's a false gospel.

And so I've come to the conclusion that Jonathan Martin, as nice as he is, is nothing less than the latest guy to be fielded on the emergent church baseball team, if you would, and he's basically doing the job that Rob Bell was doing ten years ago.

So it's going to be fascinating to see if he's able to kind of garner the same kind of popularity that Rob Bell was able to garner for himself ten years ago.

That kind of remains to be seen, but he's engaging in the same slick, double -speak, same slick rethinking of the biblical gospel and things like that.

So what we're going to be doing today, in fact, let's talk about what we're going to do on today's episode of Fighting for the Faith.

We have two things we're going to be doing today. First thing that we did, obviously, was me taking the time to remind you what the

Bible does say regarding our salvation. You're going to need that, and obviously

I'll chime in and reiterate some of these points and then bring in some other passages during the sermon review in hour number two.

But what we're going to do today, kind of like yesterday, we're going to do two things, although we've done three. Today's monologue went long, but I needed to kind of lay that track so that we can talk about, you know, so that that is foundation work that we can build on in our sermon review, which will be in about a half hour.

But what we're going to do right now, we're going to pause, we're going to take our first break in just a minute, and when we come back, we're going to do part two of what we started yesterday with Joyce Meyer.

And yesterday's program, I named the segment, Joyce Meyer Waxes Word of Faith, something like that.

You know, you've heard the phrase, waxes eloquent. That's, you know, that was the idea behind the, although the title itself is a little bit weird.

You read it and go, huh, what? Yeah, afterwards I thought maybe I should have named it something different, but too late now, that's what it's called.

So we're going to be doing Joyce Meyer Waxes Word of Faith part two today. We're going to back the tape up just a little bit, continue where we left off with her false teaching, and then in hour number two, we're going to actually review

Brian Zahn's guest sermon that he preached at Renovatus over the weekend called

A Beautiful Gospel. And this is slick, absolutely slick. It's a duplicitous speaking out of both sides of your mouth, full frontal assault against the biblical teaching that Christ was your substitute.

And I'm going to be referring back to my lectures on how to not be deceived, snookered, and bamboozled, because in order to understand how this guy is doing what he's doing, you must have a firm grasp of some of the basics of sound biblical hermeneutics to kind of what he's referring to, or how he's doing what he's doing.

So I'm going to be referring back to those lectures and some of the major principles of sound biblical hermeneutics so that you can understand how he's doing what he's doing.

And believe me when I tell you, early on he gives verbal kudos to the gospel of penal substitution, but the little verbal kudos that he gives, that's just to be polite, because at the end of the sermon he full -on says that that penal substitution, that that gospel is not the gospel.

So what we're dealing with here is a full -blown false gospel today. Kind of rare that we do that.

Most guys don't have the guts to hang it out there so clearly, but yeah, this is absolutely dangerous and duplicitous.

So with all of that said, we're going to pause right here and we're going to take our first break and we're going to pay some bills.

If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the Faith, you can do so.

My email address is talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com, or you can subscribe on Facebook, facebook .com

forward slash piratechristian, or you can follow me on Twitter, my name there, at piratechristian. Like I said, quick break when we come back,

Joyce Meyer update, Joyce Meyer Wax's Word of Faith part two. Stay tuned.

We will be right back. Because all the letters of the

Bible are red letters, you're listening to Fighting for the Faith. You're listening to Pirate Christian Radio.

We'll be taking your false doctrine now. Ha ha ha ha ha. It's...

Marty Python's Flying Circus Church. This is a resource made available by Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Lectio Divina is an ancient spiritual practice from the Christian monastic tradition. And in Lectio Divina, we seek to experience the presence of God through reading and listening, prayer, meditation, and contemplation.

Lectio Divina can be done as an individual or a group. Are you ready to begin? Yes, I guess

I am. All right. Begin by choosing a section of scripture that you would like to read and pray.

You can choose the text randomly or use a liturgical book like the Book of Common Prayer.

Try not to set a goal for how much content you will cover. The goal is to listen for and experience

God and his presence. Um, I guess I'll go randomly then. Eenie, meenie, miney, moe.

Catch a scripture by its toe. If it's gospel, let it go. Eenie, meenie, miney, moe.

Preparation for Lectio Divina. Next, do what you must to quiet and prepare yourself to hear from God.

If you need to find a quiet room or sit in silence for several minutes or sit in a comfy chair, take whatever posture will help you prepare to receive and experience

God's presence. Okay, let's see. I've got my comfy chair and, oh, no.

You out there! How am I supposed to experience the presence of God if you're using a jackhammer?

Shut up! Roughly sorry about that, ma 'am. Yeah, you better be sorry! Next, when you sense that your heart is prepared, begin by slowly reading the passage of scripture that you have selected.

Don't move too quickly through any sentence or phrase. And as you read, pay attention to what word or phrase or idea catches your attention.

Okay, I don't know when I'm supposed to be ready. There's no kind of timer on me. Anyway, um, the passage of scripture.

Judas hung himself. Judas hung himself.

Judas hung himself. Next, begin to meditate on the word, phrase, or idea that captured your attention.

Repeat it again and again. Hung himself. Hung himself.

Hung himself. What thoughts come to mind as you meditate on this word, phrase, or idea?

Suicide? What are you reminded of in your life? Um, an early death?

What does it make you hope for? A different passage of scripture? Next, begin to speak to God.

Tell God what word, phrase, or idea captured your attention and what came to mind as you meditated upon it.

Lord, the phrase was, Judas hung himself. It's not a good feeling.

How is God using this word, phrase, or idea to bless and transform you? How should

I know that? Tell God what you have been thinking and feeling as you've listened and meditated.

I'm feeling depressed. Tell God how you hope this word, phrase, or idea will change your heart to be more like his.

This is rubbish. A complete waste of my time. I could be out trimming the petunias or burying the cat or something.

If I'm going to experience God, I'm going to do it the old -fashioned way. Just open the Bible and read it.

Don't be so silly and modern. Everybody knows that you can't experience God that way. Have you purchased your airline tickets for your summer getaway yet?

If not, don't pay more for your airfare, hotel room, or rental car than you need to. Long -time

Pirate Christian Radio featured advertiser, Cheapo Air, is your one -stop shop for all of your travel needs.

And we've got a special promo code for you to use at Cheapo Air to save an additional $10 off of Cheapo Air's already low prices.

So visit PirateChristianRadio .com forward slash cheap, write down the promo code, then click on the web banner and book your travel today.

And remember, a portion of your purchase will go to support Pirate Christian Radio. That website address, again, is

PirateChristianRadio .com forward slash cheap. And thank you for your support.

Cowabunga. You see, it's not too soon to be making your plans, saving your pennies, and asking for work off April 25, 26, and 27 of 2014 for the 11th annual

Branson Worldview Weekend. This past year, we had people from all over the country and actually from other countries join us in the beautiful rolling hills of Branson, Missouri.

So if you're looking to attend the premiere Understanding the Times Biblical Worldview Weekend, then join us

April 25, 26, and 27 of 2014 for the Branson Worldview Weekend.

It's for all ages. Children 11 and under are free. We also have a group rate and a family rate.

The Worldview Weekends have been around since 1993. So we're one of the oldest biblical worldview conferences in America.

So mark your counter now for Branson, Missouri, April 25, 26, and 27, 2014.

Okay, we're back. Hour number two of Fighting for the Faith sermon review time. What you're about to hear is the same false gospel that you would hear from somebody like Brian McLaren or Rob Bell.

Different cast of characters, same heresy. But let's do this right.

The good, the bad, the ugly, we review it all here at Fighting for the Faith. We're an equal opportunity sermon reviewing service.

Today's sermon comes to us via Renovatus in Charlotte, North Carolina.

This is where Jonathan Martin is the head pastor. But he's not preaching today. He will be introducing the person preaching today, whose name is

Brian Zahnd, Z -A -H -N -D, or you

Canadians out there, Zed, Z -A -H -N -D,

Brian Zahnd. The name of the sermon is entitled, A Beautiful Gospel. Go back to what

I was reading earlier from the book of Galatians. The book of Galatians, by the way, I'll be getting back to it today during the sermon review here.

But at the opening of the program in the monologue, I read to you

Galatians chapter one, chapter, verse six, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you to in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is contrary to the one we preached, let him be accursed.

As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

So is there another gospel? The answer is no. There is only one gospel. That's the gospel.

And the gospel is laid out for us very clearly in first Corinthians 15. Christ died for our sins, was buried and was raised again on the third day.

That's what the scripture says. That's the gospel. So what was Jesus doing on the cross? He was dying for our sins or as Isaiah says, he was pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, or as Paul says in second

Corinthians five, that God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God, that Jesus was a propitiation for our sins.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. The book of Hebrews says, but that's not the gospel that you're going to hear

Brian Zond preaching. You're going to hear him attacking it in a very postmodern Brian McLaren, Rob Bell esque emergent way.

Yep. So without any further ado, here is Brian's actually

Jonathan Martin introducing Brian Zond and his sermon, a beautiful gospel. Here we go.

I was thinking about this earlier this morning, actually, that I kind of grew up in a pastor's home and I used to know some pastors who would talk about how whenever they would bring in a guest speaker that they would intentionally kind of slum it a bit and make sure they brought in people who would make the congregation appreciate them more the following Sunday.

Like that, like that was the strategy. I'll have you know, I'm extraordinarily picky about guests that we bring in and I'm only going to bring in folks that I would want to sit in here and be fed by.

And this morning, I'm just especially excited to present someone to you that really is, I don't know, from a distance has been really a role model to me, kind of an older brother in the

Lord. I started to say an elder brother, and I didn't think that would be exactly how we want to frame that. But yeah, I'm so excited about Brian Zahn being with us.

And before he comes, I want to tell you just a little bit about him and where he's from. Pastor Brian and Perry lead

Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. They started that church in 1981 and have pastored that for 31 years, which

I think is extraordinary in and of itself. And Brian has been on this journey for a long time.

I won't take too much time with this this morning, but it really is crazy to me just how parallel our paths have been.

Brian has operated in the same kind of world that I come from and yet has also been moving in the same direction our church has been moving, however one wants to quantify that.

I love what you said earlier, Brian, that whatever it is that God's doing in your church, he's doing here too. And you just recognize the spirit of that.

There's just such a kinship. And I really appreciate the way that Brian Zahn is paving a path.

He's, I guess, 19 years older than me, exactly. And just the way that he's paving a path. And I think taking probably some of the hits for people like me as well really is just a remarkable thing.

So I wanted for a long time for him to come to our church. We first met via Twitter. So there are really good things that can happen via social media.

I have a habit, if you follow me on Twitter, you know that basically half my tweets are retweeting Brian Zahn. But that's where we first kind of got connected.

And I asked him earlier this year, hey, just pick a weekend. If there is a time you think you could be gone from your church, because he doesn't miss, understandably as I don't hear, he doesn't miss weekends at his church very often.

So it's a huge honor that him and Perry would take the time to come and be here with us this weekend on one of the handful of times out of the weekend where he's going to be gone from his pulpit.

So I'm so thrilled that he's here. Just before he comes, I do want to mention to you that we have some of Brian's books for sale in the lobby.

I'm told that we sold out already from the first service of Beauty Will Save the World. I do love that book.

That's one we just had our staff and leadership read. But all of Brian's books are amazing. So I want to especially encourage you.

I know that Unconditional is back there. The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness. Please pick up this book on your way out.

You absolutely will adore it. And we'll make sure that we have plenty of copies of Beauty Will Save the World next week.

So we'll also have more of those available the following Sunday. But it's just such an honor to have Brian here.

So much more I could say, but I really just don't want to cut into his time. He's a remarkable man of God. And I am just giddy like a schoolgirl, as I put it to my friends earlier, just to be able to sit here and just be able to take notes and say amen.

I'm telling you, I think I will. One more thing. I promise I'm trying to hand it over. We've been in the series called

Both End where we're talking about biblical interpretation. And I didn't ask Brian in any way to do anything explicitly with the series.

But I think given the framework that we've kind of set up for the last couple weeks, I think the message that you're about to hear really, really, really is extraordinary in terms of just how this fits into the understanding that we've been talking about in terms of how we read scripture, how we understand

Jesus to be the word of God. I mean, it just only the Holy Spirit can plan things like that. But without further ado,

I'm just so honored to have Pastor Brian Zahn with us. Would you stand to your feet and give a warm welcome this morning to Pastor Brian as he comes.

Hi. You're easy to please.

I, yeah, this started as a Twitter romance. And so then

I had to come out here to North Carolina and meet the Renovatusians. You're my kind of people,

Renovatusians. Is that the correct term? I don't know. I don't have all the lingo down yet. But I am happy to say that between the first and second service,

I have been made an honorary associate pastor of Renovatus.

And I will be leading the Kansas City Chiefs fan small group, which

I anticipate will be very small, but it's all right. Don't have to have a big ministry here. I'm really glad to be here.

We had a lot of fun in the first service. And it's OK to have fun. You can be spiritual and have a move of God and encounter the

Holy Spirit and have fun all at the same time. And so that's what we want to do today.

And I don't know. We're just all in this together. What God is doing here at Renovatus, I think

God is doing something very similar at Word of Life in St. Joseph, Missouri. And so let's just be together and let the

Holy Spirit speak to us this morning. Let's take a moment and pray. Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love upon the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.

So clothe us in your spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you for the honor of your name.

Amen. This morning, I would like to talk to you about how beauty will save the world.

And I want to talk to you about a beautiful gospel. I guess

I really want to talk about God this morning. Is it all right if I talk about God this morning? Now, if we say we're going to talk about God, that means we're going to do theology.

Because if you form a thought about God, if you dare to speak a word about God, you are engaging in theology.

So let me give you two very simple but very profound axioms of Christian theology.

And everything that I do after this will sort of be built upon these two statements. Number one,

God is immutable. You probably have gone all week long and not used the word immutable.

So here we go. God is immutable. That means God does not change. God does not mutate.

God is not in the process of having once been like this. He's becoming like that.

Part of the foundation of our faith is that though everything else around us may be in flux and change,

God remains the same. That we can have faith because we know that God does not mutate.

He doesn't change. He's always the same. That's the first fundamental truth that we're going to build what we deal with this morning upon.

Okay, now that's correct. God is immutable. Second statement of Christian theology,

God is fully revealed in Jesus Christ. God is most perfectly fully revealed in Jesus Christ.

In fact, we could say it this way. Jesus is the word of God.

Jesus is what God has to say.

In this series, both and, we're... Okay, now listen really carefully to this.

Jesus is what God has to say. These are arguments that I normally hear from the so -called red -letter

Christians, okay? Keep this in mind. We're going to be doing a little bit of biblical work along the way here.

But what you're going to hear is a, if you were to think of it in terms of magic, is a sleight -of -hand trick that's about to come up here by engaging in different word meanings and basically conflating everything into one word, not distinguishing the different meanings of that particular word.

But watch what he does here. It's fascinating. You are looking at Scripture.

I'm going to suggest to you that it would help you very much in your understanding if when you hear the phrase, word of God, the first thing that would come to your mind is

Jesus Christ. The Bible is the word of God, but in a secondary sense.

You see what he's doing here? The Bible is the word of God, but, but, in a secondary sense.

That's the kind of but that erases the thing before. Yeah, the Bible is the word of God, but, okay, watch what he does.

Jesus is the word made flesh. God never became a book, but God did become a human being.

Jesus is the word of God. The Bible is not a member of the Trinity. Yeah, that's correct.

That's absolutely correct. The Bible is not a member of the Trinity. Yet, according to the

Bible, the entire Bible from beginning to end is the work of the

Holy Spirit, who is one of the members of the Trinity. And I don't know any

Christians out there who think that the Bible is the fourth member of the Trinity. Do you know anybody that believes that way?

I don't. Boy, be very careful when somebody starts trying to cut this way, because what they're doing is engaging in kind of creating a false split, if you would.

I don't know anybody that's arguing that the Bible is the fourth person of the Trinity, but I know from Scripture itself that the

Bible is the word of God. Jesus calls it the word of God, even though Jesus is the word of God himself, and we're talking in the sense that the

Apostle John reveals at the opening of his gospel. But here we're talking about the graphe, the writings of God, the

Scripture, okay? And they're all inspired by God the Holy Spirit, and when we read

Scripture, we know we are hearing the voice of God. But when somebody starts arguing this way, they're up to no good, because what they're trying to do is start to erode your belief in the authority of Scripture by first confusing and confounding you, because you thought you knew what was meant by the term word of God, and now they've basically short -circuited your thinking, and when they do that, it starts to erode what you thought you knew regarding the, quote, word of God, and you start to begin to have doubts about, well, how authoritative is the

Bible, really? Jesus is the word of God, and you see, you start arguing like that,

He already has you. At this point, you're cut off from the written word, and Satan has you.

But Jesus is. There is one mediator between God and man, and it's not the

Bible, it's Jesus Christ. The value of Scripture is that it is the most faithful witness to the true word of God, who is

Jesus Christ. Most faithful witness, that's a weird way of talking.

Everybody that I've heard use that term over the past decade in the emergent church, when they talk about the

Bible being the most faithful witness, they would then, in the next breath, say things like, and there's other witnesses that are not quite as faithful, maybe like the

Quran or the Baha 'i Gita, and they start talking in terms of universalism. Okay, no, the

Bible isn't just the most faithful witness of people's experiences of God, that's

Brian McLaren's heresy. The Bible is not a constitution. It's more like a scrapbook,

Brian McLaren argues, right? This guy is up to no good. And what's he doing?

He's already causing you to doubt the authority of Scripture.

That is the work of the devil, who comes and says, did God really say?

So rather than saying that the Bible is the inerrant, authoritative, inspired, theanoustos,

God -breathed Word of God, now I say, oh, it's the most faithful witness of people's experiences with God.

That's not what Scripture says about itself at all. So our two statements, number one,

God is immutable. Number two, God is most fully revealed in Jesus Christ.

So perhaps we can put God is most fully revealed in Jesus. I thought Jesus was God in human flesh.

We talk about the doctrine of the incarnation. Again, weird way to talk about Jesus. There's a false

Christology going on here too. Oftentimes when you have a false gospel, you have a false

Christology and false, well, a doctrine of God as well.

Put that together and make this statement. God is like Jesus.

God has... God is like Jesus? I thought Jesus is God. That's what

John 1 says. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God.

The Word was God. Always been like Jesus.

Why? Because he doesn't mutate. He doesn't change. God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus.

There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus. We haven't always known this, but now we do.

My text this morning will come from the first chapter of the gospel of John.

I suppose if it's permissible to pick favorites among the gospels,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I have to admit my favorite is John. But John had an advantage.

John just outlived everybody. And John got to think about, oh,

I don't know, 30, 40 years longer about Jesus before he put pen to paper and composed his memoir.

I think it's the most beautiful book in the New Testament. And John begins his...

John's gospel is not a memoir of John's life. It is a witness to the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

According to John, he says, these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the

Son of God, and by believing, you might have life in his name. That's what John said the purpose of the gospel of John was.

Memoir of Jesus like this in the beginning, which is a very daring way for a

Jew to begin a memoir, since there's already a famous Jewish book that starts out in the beginning.

Again, it is inappropriate to call the gospel of John a memoir. And in fact,

John wants you to see that. John wants you to know that he is doing no less than retelling the big story.

And he begins his story like this. In the beginning was the word, the logos, the idea.

In the beginning was God's own logic. Our word logic comes from that Greek word logos.

In the beginning was the word, the logos, the logic of God. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was

God. Verse 14. And the word, the logic of God became flesh, became a human being.

That's Merry Christmas. That's incarnation. That's God in Christ joining us.

Okay, that's an important verb. Joining us. Okay.

I've, I'm very familiar with this theology from the emergent movement.

Such a holy and wonderful and beautiful mystery that God says,

I will join humanity in its mess. And God says,

I will join humanity in its mess. Already, this should be making you go.

Something's wrong here. There is something very wrong in its predicament, in its sorrow, in its suffering.

I will join them so much. So that when Jesus becomes about 30 years of age, he is baptized.

Remember John, the Baptist in the river, Jordan, baptizing the people in a baptism of, do you remember what it was?

A baptism of repentance. So here comes Jesus. John is baptizing people in a baptism of repentance.

And here comes Jesus. What's going on here? How can Jesus repent? Jesus does not need to repent personally.

He's without sin. But Jesus has joined a sinful race and Jesus does not stand aloof from us and say, you know what?

You all got a big problem. You need to repent. Jesus comes and joins us and says, you know what?

We got a big problem. Wait a second. I thought Jesus preached a message of repentance.

Let me just do a quick... We're going to do a word search in the

New Testament. We're going to do a word search in the Gospels, okay? And we're going to look for the word repent.

And I'm going to see if I see it anywhere with red letters, okay?

Oh, here we go. Matthew chapter 4, verse 17. From that time,

Jesus began to preach saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Okay, then we got the Gospel of Matthew chapter 11.

And starting at verse 20, here's what it says. Then he, Jesus, began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.

Woe to you, Corazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the works that have been done in you that have been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago and sat clothed in ashes.

But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.

So, yeah, when I check the eyewitness testimony, the eyewitness accounts of Jesus's life and teaching, what do

I learn from the eyewitnesses? Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. I learn that Jesus preached about repentance, and he even commanded the disciples to preach repentance.

Luke chapter 24, let me read this to you at the tail end. This is

Luke's version of the Great Commission. 24 verse 45, Then he,

Jesus, opened their minds to them to understand the Scriptures. And he said to them, Thus it is written that the

Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

So here we've got Pastor Zond, Brian here telling us,

Oh, Jesus is not sitting there coming and saying, Oh, you need to repent. And yet Jesus preaches a message of repentance.

And the first thing out of his mouth in the Gospel of Matthew is repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Strange, huh? Yeah, I think it's strange for sure. But then we've got this little thing that we've got to deal with.

What does the biblical text say as to why Jesus would be baptized by John the

Baptist when he doesn't need to be baptized? Because John's baptism is a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Here's what it says in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew chapter 3, verse 13, Then Jesus came from Galilee to the

Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him saying, I need to be baptized by you and you come to me.

But Jesus answered him, Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

So Jesus's explanation as to why he was being baptized, real simple. You're going to say the same thing as scripture says.

The reason why Jesus was baptized is to fulfill all righteousness.

We continue. We need to repent and I join you in our situation.

Come on, let's all repent and turn toward God. That's what Jesus does. No, he doesn't.

I'm going to back this up so that you can hear it again, because this is a complete twisting of scripture.

He's without sin. But Jesus has joined a sinful race and Jesus does not stand aloof from us and say,

You know what? You all got a big problem. You need to repent. Jesus comes and joins us and says,

We got a big problem. We need to repent. And I really, where in scripture does

Jesus ever need to repent of anything? Join you in our situation.

Come on, let's all repent and turn toward God. That's what Jesus does. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God.

The word was God and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, lived among us, tabernacled among us, shared our pains and our sorrows and our hopes and our dreams.

Verse 17. The law was given through Moses.

The Torah was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

So through Moses, we're given the Torah. We're given a law that begins to move us in a direction of understanding

God, but let's keep in mind what the Old Testament is. The Old Testament is an inspired telling of Israel's story of coming to know their

God. But the story is not complete until you get to Jesus. Again, weird definition.

So that John can say, Well, the Torah, the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Verse 18. No one has seen God at any time.

The only begotten Son who is near the Father, He has made him known.

Now, this is a very daring thing for John to say. John writes, No one has seen

God at any time. And I can just imagine someone saying, Excuse me, John, but what about Abraham?

Abraham met with God and had a meal with him under the oaks of Mamre.

And what about Jacob? Didn't Jacob see God at the top of that ladder at Bethel? What about Moses?

Moses saw God on Mount Sinai and his face did shine. What about the 70 elders of Israel who saw

God and they ate and they drank? What about Isaiah? He saw the

Lord in the temple in the year that King Uzziah died. What about Ezekiel?

He had visions of God by the river Chebar, to which John says, I know, I know, I know.

I know about all of those. But I'm telling you, no matter what visions, dreams, revelations, theophanies, christophanies, epiphanies, no matter what we have had in the past compared to what we now have revealed in the

Word becoming flesh, no one has ever seen God until you've seen Jesus. If you want to know what

God is like, you look at Jesus. And that is the recurring theme from which John never departs in the whole of his gospel.

In so many different ways, he records Jesus saying things like, I only do what the

Father does. I only say what the Father says. Finally, in the upper room, Philip says, show us the

Father and it's enough. And Jesus says, oh, Philip, have you been with me so long that you don't realize that if you've seen me, you've seen the

Father? Jesus did not come to save us from the

Father. He came to show us the Father. Okay, a false split.

Let's take a look at a biblical text from the Gospel of John of all places. Gospel of John chapter three, verse one.

Now, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. A cute way of describing the story is we're looking at Nick at night.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.

Jesus answered him, truly, truly, amen, amen. I say to you, unless one is born from above.

Okay, that's probably anothen is the Greek word there. Unless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Okay, you could say again, but that's not really, it's not quite catching what the

Greek there is saying. Unless one is born from above, born again gets it in a way, but born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he's old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Notice Nicodemus here is thinking in terms of from below rather than from above, right?

Jesus answered, amen, amen. Truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born anothen from above.

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. So Nicodemus said to him, how can these things be?

Jesus answered him, are you the teacher of Israel? And yet you do not understand these things.

Amen, amen. Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know. We bear witness to what we have seen, but you, you do not receive our testimony.

If I had told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

And I'm going to pause here for a second. If you believe in him, you do not perish. If you do not believe in him, you do perish.

We continue. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God.

And this is the judgment. Light has come into the world and the people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

John ends this chapter with these words. Whoever believes in the son has eternal life.

This is verse 36. Whoever does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

The wrath of God remains on the one who does not believe. So now we've got a problem here because the gospel of John that he's referencing contradicts what

Brian Zond is saying. Let me back up the tape so that you can hear it again in context.

Here we go. Yes. Finally, in the upper room, Philip says, show us the father and it's enough.

And Jesus says, oh, Philip, have you been with me so long that you don't realize that if you've seen me, you've seen the father?

Jesus did not come to save us from the father. OK, well, it says that those who believe will not perish.

And if you do not believe, then the wrath of God remains on you. So what are we being saved from again in your theology?

Because according to the theology of the gospel of John, which is actually chock full, the same theology throughout the rest of the

Bible, we're being saved from the wrath of God, the wrath of God against our sin and our rebellion against him because we were all born dead in trespasses and sins and under the power and dominion of the devil.

This is what Scripture says. The wrath of God remains on those who do not believe. He came to show us the father.

He came to reveal to us what God had always been like all along.

We had had hints and guesses in the dark about the nature of God. We got some things right.

We got some things wrong. But then what God has to say, his word became a human being so that we could actually see what

God is really like and everybody could understand it. Yes, through Jesus, we do know what

God is like, but not to the exclusion of the wrath of God. Jesus is the doctrine of God as a human being.

Yes, that's true. God is like Jesus. Jesus is

God. God has always been like Jesus. There's... Yeah, Jesus has always been

God. Never been a time when God was not like Jesus. We haven't always known this, but now we do.

So as we look at the life of Jesus Christ, we begin to see what

God is like. Now, as we consider the life of Jesus, his birth in Bethlehem, all the way through what follows, if we want to find a single defining moment in the life of Jesus to say, right there, right there, that's where I'm going to center my reading of Scripture.

That right there is the moment in which I'm going to say, we really see what God is like. It must be when

Jesus is upon the cross and his arms are stretched out in prophet embrace.

He's being unjustly executed. It's a lynching. It's a murder.

Our sins are being sinned violently into him. And upon the cross in the cruciform,

Jesus says, father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And the father says, of course, son, you and I are one.

That's my heart too. I don't recall the father saying that you're adding to Scripture.

That is always what I want to do. I want to forgive. And that's the moment when we look at Jesus upon the cross.

You understand the cross was intended by the Romans to be a form of psychological terror.

It was to be so ugly, so hideous that having seen it once, you would turn away and never want to look at it again.

The empire making a statement, this is what we do to those who oppose us. And yet in that act of love, in that act of co -suffering love, where Jesus gives us and shows us the love of the father, he transforms the cross so that many of you today have one around your neck.

You regard it as an emblem of beauty. That Jesus was able to take that which was a symbol of death and psychological terror and turn it into a symbol of beauty because the most beautiful moment in all of eternity is when

Christ upon the cross says, father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And he turns that which is ultimately ugly into that which is indescribably beautiful.

And beauty will save the world. This is the beauty that will save the world. One of my favorite theologians is

Hans Urs von Balthasar and his name totally rocks.

I mean, come on, you can't beat that name. Great Swiss theologian. I know Pastor Jonathan has been influenced by that great theologian.

When my first grandson who just turned three, when he was born, I was trying to convince my son to name him

Hans Urs von Balthasar Zond. I mean, how awesome would that be? Zond is a

Swiss name. It would work. You know, Hans Urs von Balthasar Zond. Of course, he'd be in fifth grade before he could spell his name, but he ended up being named

Jude. Hans Urs von Balthasar says, and it may be my all time favorite theological quote, being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death,

Christ upon the cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who

God is. See it in your mind. See Christ nailed to the tree.

His arms are outstretched. He is assuming the cruciform and he is speaking words of forgiveness.

Father, forgive them. Weird that he's not talking about Christ suffering for our sins.

That's what Isaiah said. That's who Philip in Acts chapter eight said was, yeah, who

Isaiah 53 was about. It was about Christ and his suffering for our sins.

Romans chapter five. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, justified by the way, dikai a 'o is a courtroom term.

It means to pronounce somebody righteous, to declare them to be righteous.

Therefore, since we have been declared or pronounced righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, Jesus, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the

Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time,

Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die.

But God demonstrates or shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified, there's that Greek word again, dikai a 'o, since we have been pronounced righteous by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Romans 5 says that we're being saved by Christ's blood from the wrath of God, and that occurs by us being pronounced and declared righteous because Christ has died for our sins, and this is grasped onto and received by grace through faith.

But notice here, Brian isn't talking like that. Oh, that Jesus, he's taken on the cruciform form, and we're seeing what

God is really like. But what you're about to hear, and just hang on, is a full -blown, full -frontal assault against the biblical gospel that Christ died for our sins.

We continue. It's paradoxically hidden under the ugliness of that.

It is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is. The apostle Paul will tell us that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

Don't confuse that. God was not reconciling himself to the world. He was reconciling the world to himself.

And now begins the attack. Let's take a look at that passage again, and let's get the full scope of what's going on there.

2 Corinthians chapter 5. Read it at the beginning of the program. Worth reading again here so that we understand what's going on here because he's just engaging in a fast one by only quoting part of the verse.

Verse 17, chapter 5, 2 Corinthians. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away, the new has come. All of this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Why was God not counting or accrediting people's trespasses against them? Well, it explains.

Therefore, verse 20, we are ambassadors of Christ and God is making his appeal through us, so we implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God.

For our sake, God made him to be sin, Jesus, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Got it? So what's going on here? Well, it's forensic justification. God was in Christ reconciling the world.

God made him to be sin, who knew no sin. In other words, God laid on him the iniquity of us all, as Isaiah says, and that's how we're reconciled to God because the wrath of God has been propitiated, and that's another important word that you need to make sure that you hang on to is that word propitiate.

Propitiate is the means by which God's wrath is expiated. I'm sorry to use terms like this, but these are all good biblical terms that we must hang on to, and they're found throughout the

New Testament. Propitiation, hang on. Romans 3, verse 25.

Let me read it in context so I don't mess this up, but here's what it says. Romans 3,

I'll start at verse 20. Yeah, somewhere, hang on there.

Verse 21. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested or revealed apart from the law.

Although the law and the prophets, they bear witness to it. The righteousness of God that is through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there is no distinction for all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God and are justified.

There's that word again, dikaio. They are pronounced righteous by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over the former sins.

So Christ is a, God put Jesus forward as a propitiation. That is the means of our atonement, the means by which

God's wrath is expiated through his blood and this is received by faith.

So we continue though with this sermon because now begins the full frontal assault against the biblical gospel.

God in Christ is saying, though you slay me, I love you.

Though you reject me, I love you. Though you kill me, I love you.

Though you spit upon me, I love you and I forgive you. I brought some chairs with me.

Now, this presentation is called the Gospel in Chairs. You can Google it if you want to see the visuals that go with this, but you don't really need to.

What you're gonna hear is gonna be sufficient. And I want to give you a little presentation.

I wanna show you a gospel and a more beautiful gospel.

I wanna show you a familiar gospel and a more beautiful gospel.

I wanna show you a modern gospel and a more beautiful gospel. I wanna show you a modern

Western gospel and an ancient, patristic, more beautiful gospel.

Now notice what he's doing here. There's a modern gospel, but I'm gonna present you a more ancient and patristic gospel.

Weird, because what have I been quoting all throughout this program? The gospel, according to scripture, is laid out very clearly in 1

Corinthians 15. Now, last time I checked, a gospel needs to be biblical, does it not? But he's saying, oh,

I'm gonna lay out for you a more ancient gospel. So he's gonna make a distinction here. Let me help you out here though.

What I laid out is the biblical gospel. 1 Corinthians 15, verse one, now I would remind you brothers of the gospel that I preached to you.

Here it is. This is the gospel that the Apostle Paul preached. This is the gospel that if you preach contrary to it, according to Galatians 1, that you are under anathema, a curse.

This is the gospel I preached to you, which you received and which you stand and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word that I preached to you unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried and was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

So here, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says that he received, this is, he's going to remind them the gospel he preached.

Here it is. Here's what he received. Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried and was raised again on the third day.

That's the gospel that he preached, right? Right. Where did the

Apostle Paul get his gospel from? We'll go back to Galatians.

Galatians 1, verse 11. For I would have you know brothers that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel for I did not receive it from any man nor was

I taught it but I received it through a revelation, a direct revelation of Jesus Christ.

For you have heard of my former life in Judaism and how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among the people.

So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers but when he who had set me apart before I was born who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the

Gentiles I did not immediately consult with anyone nor did I go to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.

I went away to Arabia and returned to Damascus. So according to the

Apostle Paul in Galatians 1, verse 11 the gospel he preached he did not receive it from a man he received it by direct revelation from Christ and what was his gospel again?

This is the gospel he said that if let me read again Galatians 1, 6 through 8 I am astonished you

Galatians that you are so quickly deserting Jesus who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel not that there is another but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ but even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach let him be accursed, anathema, damned as we have said before so now

I say again if anyone's preaching to a gospel contrary to the one you received let him be accursed, damned, anathema and what was the gospel that the

Apostle Paul received? Let me read again 1 Corinthians 15, verse 3 for I delivered to you as of first importance what

I also received that Christ died for our sins in our place that's what it says in accordance with the scripture that he was buried that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures that he appeared to Cephas into the twelve so what you are going to hear here despite his claim oh that idea that Christ died for our sins as our substitute and all that kind of stuff that's a new modern gospel that's not true at all not true at all why?

because that gospel is found in scripture clearly taught and the Apostle Paul preached it that gospel and you know who he got it from?

he got it directly from Jesus and not a human being and it's clearly laid out for us in 1

Corinthians 15 that Christ died for our sins so what you're going to hear here is a full -on attack against that gospel presentations a first and a second a typical an ordinary a common that which you are probably acquainted with and familiar with and something

I believe more true more biblical more Christian more beautiful it goes like this in the beginning

God created man in his image and in his likeness he placed him in the garden that man would have fellowship with God but in the garden man sinned and turned away from God now because God is so holy that he cannot bear to look upon our sin

God must look away from sinful man and now there is a breach between God and man but God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son into the world to be our substitute and Jesus Christ lived faithfully fulfilling the will of God but in the end

Jesus is crucified and Jesus begins to bear the wrath of God upon sin and in the defining moment

Jesus bearing our sin and God cannot look upon sin because he is too holy to do so turns away from his son and his son bearing our sins pays the price and he dies notice the mocking tone and he's raised again on the third day for those who believe that God has done this for us we are forgiven of our sins for the sake of Jesus so that God's white hot wrath towards sinners we are spared from it as Christ becomes our covering he becomes our asbestos suit to protect us from the white hot wrath of God against sinners or as Martin Luther colorfully put it we are but snow -covered dung and so God's disposition towards sinners is one of wrath but for the sake of Jesus God will forgive us if we believe if we do not believe this then we remain subject to the white hot wrath of God and in the end death overcomes us and we are eternally separated and abandoned to the wrath of God now remember

I just quoted just quoted the gospel of John chapter 3 the tail end of it the last verse in the gospel of John chapter 3 let me read it again whoever believes in the son has eternal life whoever does not obey the son shall not see life but the wrath of God remains on him weird the thing that he is mocking and attacking is actually

God's word and what it really says now let's go back to Romans 5 spend a little bit of time there and let's just work through a biblical passage let's engage in exegesis which is what you're supposed to do

Romans chapter 5 verse 6 again says for while we were still weak at the right time Christ died for the ungodly for one will scarcely die for a righteous person though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die but God demonstrates his love for us that while we were still sinners

Christ died for us since therefore we have now been justified pronounced righteous by faith by his blood much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God so here

Paul says that we are saved from the wrath of God for if while we were enemies listen to that Romans chapter 5 verse 10 for if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life more than that we also rejoice in God through our

Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation so listen to the nature of the relationship that we have towards God prior to being saved just here in Romans okay or in John anyone who believes has eternal life the one who doesn't remains under the wrath of God here

Paul says that we were all enemies of God and God reconciled us to himself through the blood of Christ and that we are saved from the wrath of God and the word reconciliation is right there in the text more than that we also rejoice in God through our

Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation reconciliation assumes that there's a breach a break in the relationship you don't need to be reconciled to whom to anybody you already have a great relationship with yet this text says that while we were still enemies of God Christ died for our sins therefore just as sin came into the world through one man that would be

Adam and death through sin and so death spread to all men because all sinned for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given but sin is not counted where there is no law yet death reigned from Adam to Moses even over those who sinning was not like the transgression of Adam who was a type of the one who was to come but the free gift is not like the trespass for if the many died through the one man's trespass much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man

Jesus Christ abounded for the many and the free gift is not like the result of the one man's sin for judgment following one trespass brought condemnation let me read that again for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation for who?

all men but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification for if because of the one man's trespass death reigned through that one man much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man

Jesus Christ therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men

Romans 5 18 therefore as one trespass led to condemnation who's doing the condemning?

God is for all men so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men for as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous now the law came in to increase trespasses but where sin increased grace abounded all the more notice

Adam was there as our representative and Christ is there as our representative okay notice the substitution going on there so that as sin reigned in death grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our

Lord get it? there's a substitute and that's Jesus he was the one who died for our sins saved us from condemnation and the wrath of God this is what the

Bible says and what is Brian attacking? this exact gospel oh claiming that it's modern oh claiming this is more in line with the patristic church

I'm going to show that to be false in a minute though boy he's selling you a story here but he's not telling you the truth he's attacking the biblical gospel that is one version of the gospel it's not all wrong there's truth in it a good deal of truth in it it's not all wrong now these kind words that he's giving to the gospel he's going to absolutely take them away at the end of this sermon oh it's not all wrong that's weird

I just demonstrated that it's exactly what the scriptures teach by going into the biblical text and exegeting it's showing it's right there throughout all of scripture he was pierced for our transgressions bruised for our inequities you know stuff like that okay that's

I mean all of this is shown in types and shadows within the entire sacrificial system of the old testament which points us to the true temple which is

Christ right? because the blood of goats and bulls doesn't actually remove sins but our sins are removed and taken away by the propitiation of Christ because without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins he's our substitute he was pierced for our transgressions this isn't new this is old it's so old it's even in the old testament all the way back to isaiah and even other passages there in scripture

I'd point to like genesis 22 and other places so okay now remember what the apostle

Paul said I am surprised I'm shocked I'm astonished that you are leaving the grace of God and following another gospel not that there is another okay so now oh well here's that here's that modern gospel but let me give you a more ancient more beautiful more truthful one he says but it's not the gospel that it has always been it's not the gospel that the early church fathers understood um

I beg to differ I happen to have in front of me a document that's published on my blog by the way

Letter of Mark you might have to search for it though because this was published a while ago on my blog called

Penal Substitution in the Writings of the Church Fathers Penal Substitution in the Writings of the Church Fathers and you can find it by the way at letterofmark .us

l -e -t -t -e -r w -w -w dot l -e -t -t -e -r -o -f m -a -r -q -u -e dot u -s and I published this on the site well actually this is

February of this year but I picked this up from my Extreme Theology blog and republished it here but yeah

Penal Substitution in the Writings of the Church Father Clement of Rome okay who by the way is mentioned in scripture um is he wrote a his first epistle to the

Corinthians late first century late first century here's what

Clement writes um we have declared our message in his presence he is as it were a child and like a root in thirsty ground he has no form nor glory yea we saw him and he had no form or comeliness but his form was without eminence yea deficient in comparison with the ordinary form of men he is a man exposed to stripes and sufferings antiquated with endurance of grief for his countenance was turned away he was despised and not esteemed he bears our iniquities and is in sorrow for our sakes yet we suppose that on his account he was exposed to labor and stripes and affliction but he was wounded for our transgressions and he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement the punishment of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we were healed all we like sheep have gone astray every man has wandered in his own way and the

Lord has delivered him up for our sins while he in the midst of his sufferings opened not his mouth he was brought as a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before her shearer is dumb so he opened not his mouth in his humiliation his judgment was taken away who shall declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth for the transgressions of my people he was brought down to death and I will give the wicked of his sepulcher and the rich for his death because he did no iniquity neither was guile found in his mouth and the

Lord is pleased to purify him by stripes if you make an offering for sin your soul shall see a long -lived seed and the

Lord is pleased to relieve him of the affliction of his soul and to show him light and to form him with understanding to justify the one who ministers well to many and he himself shall carry their sins on this account he shall inherit many and shall divide the spoil of the strong because his soul was delivered to death and he was reckoned among the sinners sorry reckoned that means counted among the transgressors the sinners and he bore the sins of many and for their sins he was delivered weird

Clement of Rome would be patristic he's one of the church fathers one of the very very very very first church fathers mentioned in scripture by the way and yet there he is in the late first century in his first epistles of the

Corinthians teaching penal substitution weird huh? Justin Martyr in his dialogue with Trifo okay by the way

Justin Martyr was martyred in 165 AD so this would be early to mid second century

Justin Martyr writes for the whole human race will be found under a curse for it is written in the law of Moses cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law and continue to do them and no one has accurately done all nor will you venture to deny this but some more and some less and others have observed the ordinances and joined but if those who are under this law appear to be under a curse for not having observed all the requirements how much more shall all the nations appear to be under a curse who practice idolatry who seduce youths and commit other crimes if then the father of all wished his

Christ for the whole human family to take upon him the curses of all knowing that after he had been crucified and was dead he would raise him up why do you argue about him who submitted to suffer these things according to the father's will as if he were accursed and do not rather bewail yourselves for although his father caused him to suffer these things in behalf or on behalf of the human family yet you do not commit the deed as an obedience to the will of God yeah there's

Justin Martyr early to mid second century in his dialogue with Trifo talking about how

Christ took the curse upon himself for the entire human family that would be substitution

Eusebius of Caesarea this would be a document from the late fourth century called the proof of the gospel he writes so it is said the

Lord hath laid on him our iniquities and he bears our sins thus the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world became a curse on our behalf whom though he knew no sin

God made sin for our sake giving him as redemption for all that we might become the righteousness of God in him and how can he make our sins his own and be said to bear our iniquities except by being regarded as his body according to the apostle who says now ye are the body of Christ and severally members of it and by the rule that if one member suffers all the members suffer with it so when the many members suffer and sin he too by the laws of sympathy takes into himself the labors and the sufferings of members and makes our sickness his and suffers all our woes and labors by the laws of love and the

Lamb of God not only did this but was chastised punished on our behalf and suffered a penalty he did not owe but which we owed because of the multitude of our sins and so he became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins because he received death for us and transferred to himself the scourging the insults and the dishonor which were due to us and drew down upon himself the appointed curse being made a curse for us

Hillary of Poitiers I can't pronounce the French here I apologize you know he in his homilies on some homily on Psalm 53 from the early fourth century says sorry he says for next there follows

I will sacrifice unto thee freely the sacrifices of the law which consisted of the whole burnt offerings and ablations of goats and of bulls did not involve an expression of free will because the sentence of a curse was pronounced on all who broke the law whoever failed to sacrifice laid himself open to the curse and it was always necessary to go through the whole sacrificial action because of the addition of a curse and the commandment forbade any trifling with the obligation of offering it was from this curse that our

Lord Jesus Christ redeemed us when as the apostle says Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us for it is written cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree thus he offered himself to the death of the accursed that he might break the curse of the law offering himself voluntarily a victim to God the

Father in order that by means of a voluntary victim the curse which attended the discontinuance of the regular victim might be removed

Athanasius of Alexandria in his book on the incarnation from the mid fourth century says this thus taking a body like our own because our all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death he surrendered his body to death in place of all and offered it to the

Father yeah there's Athanasius teaching well substitution further in his book he says the word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death yet he himself as the word being immortal in the father son was such as could not die for this reason therefore he assumed a body capable of death in order that it through belonging to the word who above who is above all might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all and itself remain incorruptible through his indwelling might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well by the grace of the resurrection it was by surrendering to death the body which he had taken as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain that he forthwith abolished death for his human brethren by the offering of the equivalent notice here dying as a sufficient exchange you can say substitute for all

I could go on and quote Gregory of Nazianzus Ambrose of Milan John Christostom Augustine of Hippo Gelsius of Sisycus 5th century

Gregory the Great you know from the 7th century I can go on and on and quote more and more but you get the point that I'm making here

Paul Zahnd here is trying to create the false impression that what he's about to preach is really ancient it's there in the patristics it is what the church fathers taught weird if that's what the church fathers really taught then how come all of the church fathers

I'm quoting going all the way back to the earliest ones you know Clement of Rome and Justin Martyr and others were all teaching substitution

I thought he said it was a modern invention weird huh we continue there is another gospel more ancient more patristic and more beautiful it goes like this in the beginning

God created man in his image and in his likeness and placed him in a garden so far everything's the same in the garden man sinned and turned away from God as a result man became subject to futility and death so that the great problem the gospel addresses is not primarily the problem of legal guilt but the problem of death huh weird because Isaiah, Paul and Romans and other places that I quoted

I'll talk about that legal thing weird huh justified it's a legal court term to be declared righteous pronounced innocent but God so loves humanity that he does not want humanity subject to futility and death so God comes to us and joins us in our humanity joins us in our predicament of futility and death so that here is a woman subject to futility and death searching for meaning searching for love but she's looking for love in all the wrong places okay now this is where I'm going to reference my lectures on sound biblical hermeneutics from the how to not be deceived bamboozled and schnookered okay when you're understanding scripture there is a there is some very important principles that must be applied scripture interprets scripture and the less clear or plain passages of scripture must be interpreted in light of the clearer passage clearer passages so here's the order of clear interpretation the old testament must be interpreted by the new okay and the gospels historical narrative must be interpreted by the epistles the gospels record the historic events of our redemption the incarnation life death and resurrection ascension of jesus christ but by themselves historic events are not sufficient we need an authoritative word that tells us the true significance theological significance of those events and we find that in the epistles so what he's doing here is he's ignoring the clear theological explanation of what christ was doing on the cross from the epistles okay and he's going back into the historical narratives and he is at this point spinning his own theological interpretation apart from the theological interpretation given in the epistles as to what christ was doing on the cross very duplicitous very difficult to understand how he's doing what he's doing but i've just pointed it out to you this is a complete botching of sound biblical hermeneutics and him trying to spin his own theological interpretation by ignoring and avoiding the clear theological teaching on what jesus was doing on the cross what he accomplished from those clear passages in the epistles as well as the book of isaiah but we continue she's gone from relationship to relationship from man to man she's been married what one two three four five times now she doesn't bother with the pretense of marriage she just lives with someone and god comes to her and sits down beside her at a well and god says to this woman i'm what you've been looking for all along what you're thirsty for is what i have i am the water of life i will love you unconditionally i will love you faithfully i will give you the water of life now notice he says this is the gospel but yet first corinthians 15 defines the gospel for us the story of the woman at the well is not where we go to get the theological definition of what the gospel is but that's where he's going with this in order to create a different gospel here is a man who in his ambition his greed has become a chief tax collector in jericho he is viewed by his own people as a traitor as colluding with the roman empire and though he is wealthy and powerful he has few friends no one wants to share a meal with him he is an outcast he is ostracized by his own people but god comes to him and sees this tax collector up in a tree and says

Zacchaeus come on down i want to have lunch at your house today i know one i know no one else wants to eat with you but i want to eat with you i will come to you i will sit in your house and as they sat together sharing a meal god says today salvation has come to this man's house for he too is a son of abraham here's a woman unfortunate woman she's been caught in adultery by the religious police they bring her into the presence of god and the religious police hurl the woman caught in adultery into the presence of god and they say the bible says to stone such women what do you say and god says let him who is without sin cast the first stone and the spell is broken and the religious police depart and god says to the woman where are your accusers did no one condemn you and she says no one sir and god says neither do i condemn you go and sin no more here is a man who has been so captured by the darkness that he has become the habitation of a legion of demons it's as if he has completely tumbled out of humanity he's regarded by his fellow villagers as little more than a monster he's driven out he lives in the tombs his pain is so great that he cries out day and night and he cuts himself with stones everyone says don't go near that graveyard there's a monster that lives there but god gets in a boat sails across the sea comes to the other side that he might meet this man and he's again he's quoting historical narrative but he's saying this is the gospel yet the scriptures in the epistles clearly define the gospel paul says he didn't receive the gospel that he preached from man but from jesus and then he defines it for us and tells us what that gospel is he preached in 1 corinthians 15 yeah the story of the the demoniac yes it's found in the historical narratives found in the gospels themselves and when i'm talking about the historical biographies written about jesus by the apostles but this doesn't theologically define what the gospel is he's again this is a hermeneutical deception that he's engaging in he says i don't reject you i'm not afraid of you i do not recoil in horror from you i come to you to set you free and god speaks to the darkness in this man's soul and he sets him free so that when the villagers hear they come out and they find the man clothed in his right mind sitting with god here's a man who just really as a result of the vagaries of life through random nature has contracted a disease so that he's paralyzed but he's brought into the presence of god lowered right down through the roof and when god sees this man he doesn't attribute what has happened to him as the justice of god punishment for his sin that which he deserves he simply says your sins are forgiven you and when people begin um can i point out the obvious problem there your sins are forgiven you assumes that his sins need to be forgiven you see what i'm saying why would he forgive his sins if he didn't need his sins to be forgiven begin to complain and said how can his sins be forgiven god says and also i want to say to you take up your bed and walk and the man is healed now notice he's not engaging in any exegesis he's not really reading any text he's summarizing them and including some details and omitting others in his retelling of these stories and when the human race driven by fear maintaining its system of an axis of power enforced by violence uh imperial talk here um this is clear he's clearly influenced by McLaren and Tony Jones and Doug Paget in the emergence and Rob Bell take god and crucify him condemn him spit upon him execute him god says i forgive you and when man notice not a single mention of he was pierced for our transgressions christ died for our sins not a word of that not a hint of it at all yet all of that is biblical experiences the final dissolution falls away into death swallowed up by the grave so that man is cut off from life and cut off from god threatening to make the whole of life without meaning because in the end it's always death the truly unthinkable happens god says though you make your bed in Sheol i am there and god himself joins us in death god in his wild pursuit of man is so committed to go wherever we go that he follows us all the way down into death because love is greater than the grave so it's just about god joining us in death you know he's becomes you know oh you are you're suffering and dying i'll suffer and die with you too what passage says that god joins us in death and that's what the gospel is about i don't recall any passages in the epistles that say that but the word of god is not yet done speaking the word of god has something else to say and the word of god in death says i am he that liveth and was dead behold i'm alive forevermore amen i have the keys of death and hell i am the resurrection and the life and all who are in the graves shall hear the voice of the son of man and they shall come forth notice this is kind of rob bell's love wins universalism going on here that's what this is and now there is no place in all of creation where the love of god is not he fills all in all and there flows from the heart of god a river of fire of love that is the constant disposition of god toward humanity god has one and only one disposition towards you and that is one of unvarying love if we respond to god's love with reciprocal love if we love him because he first loved us the fire that flows from the heart of god which is pure love is experienced by us as light and warmth so if we respond in love then our experience of god's love is light and warmth okay but if we fight against it if we resist it if we repel it if we turn against it the fire of god's love that flows from his heart though it is nothing but love is experienced by us as a wrath ah so it's not that we're really under the wrath of god it's just that we mistakenly experience god's love as wrath if we don't turn and respond in love to his love no that that means that all the passages in scripture that talk about people remaining under the wrath of god that's not that they're really experiencing god's wrath it's that they're they're experiencing god's love but because they refuse to see it as love they're just experiencing it as wrath this is false teaching this is a false gospel as a kind of judgment but all we need to do is turn toward him love him because he first loves us and that which at first appears to be wrath becomes light and warmth because god only has one disposition toward us and that is love what makes the difference is how we respond to it the apostle paul tells us at the end of romans 12 if your enemy is hungry feed him paul is i find it very fascinating that you go to romans 12 but you skipped 5, 4, 3 you know all the passages that totally contradict everything that you're saying borrowing from the sermon on the mount if you're hungry if your enemy is hungry feed him if he's thirsty give him drink and then paul says something interesting for in so doing it will be like fiery coals upon their head see you see if for some strange reason i hate jonathan martin and yet he continues to love me and has a disposition of love towards me even though i have defined myself as an enemy but he won't fulfill the role of enemy he continues to play the role of friend so that when i'm hungry he takes me to mertz and gives me cornbread and sweet tea if i still am trying to hate him it just burns me up that he does that i'm trying to have a good war here i'm trying to have a feud i'm trying to have a fight and i get hungry and he takes me to mertz and gives me cornbread and salmon patties and gives me sweet tea and it just burns me up that he does that all i need to do is repent all i need to do is kind of just turn around in my attitude and say wait a minute i've been stupid that jonathan martin's the greatest guy he just wants to be friends he just wants to take me to mertz give me salmon patties cornbread and sweet tea and all of a sudden that which had been burning me up is now well this is just the best we're just sitting in here having our cornbread or our salmon patties and then a little peach cobbler at the end and it's just the best and come on that's what this table is all about it doesn't have to be burning coals upon your head all you have to do is so he's misapplied paul's text from romans chapter 12 to basically say see this is what's happening with the wrath of god you see because god's just doing all he's just loving you but because you're you don't have a good disposition towards him you experience his love as his wrath it's your mistake you just don't understand what he's doing is totally erasing the biblical category of the wrath of god let me read to you a passage that happens to be chock full of red letters revelation chapter 2 verse 19 that's where i'll start jesus has uh john actually i'll start at verse 18 to the angel you say the pastor of the church in thyra thyra right the words of the son of god who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze i know your works your love and faith and service and patient endurance and that your latter works exceed the first but i have this against you that you tolerate that woman jezebel who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols i gave her time to repent but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality behold i will throw her onto a sick bed and those who commit adultery with her i will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works and i will strike her children dead and all the churches will know that i am he who searches the mind and the heart and i will give to each of you according to your works hmm so do you think when jesus strikes their children dead because they refuse to repent of their sexual immorality that um they will that's really just god's love and if they would just see it as love they wouldn't experience it as wrath you think that's what that means hardly let's say i'm going to quit turning away from god and i'm going to turn toward god because god has only one disposition towards you and that is love and how to know god also has wrath that is a very real category and he's just trying to erase it using sophistry not what the bible teaches how do i know that because i look at jesus god is like jesus god has always been like jesus well there's never been a time when god was not like jesus we haven't always known this but now we do i uh i go to russia pretty often i like the russians i like all things russian i love russian literature i have two cats leo tolstoy and fyodor dostoevsky and i have a lot of russian friends one of my russian friends is gara alekseev and he's the front man in a metal rock band russian was made for metal music you know it's just the language is just metal is okay in english in russian it's like taken to a whole new level so gara's in a metal band gara alekseev and he's living the rock and roll lifestyle sex drugs and rock and roll the band grushki they've got a hanger on that they let hang out with them because he supplies them with pretty good drugs and so he's giving them drugs and they let him hang out with the band then that guy i don't know his name let's say it was sergey sergey disappears he's gone for several months gara thinks well sergey sergey and his good drugs are no more maybe he got arrested maybe he's dead who knows but then one day sergey shows back up at the rehearsal room and gara sees sergey and he says oh he's changed something different got a more of a bounce in his step he's wearing some nice clothes he must have become a big drug dealer but that's not what happened sergey began to talk to gara and drushki and say hey guys hey guys it's jesus jesus jesus is the way jesus is the truth jesus is alive jesus loves you jesus will save you jesus jesus jesus jesus and drushki's like jesus and they're not they're not interested in this so gara just continues on the course that he's on but you know it begins to take its toll one night gara's at a party and he just starts to feel the waste he feels the emptiness of it just begins to not be what he thought it would be and he thinks he might be in the market for something better so he slips away into a restaurant restroom and he prays he says jesus if you're there if you can hear me if you're real make yourself know if what sergey told me about you is true i want to know you i want to find you i want to meet you jesus are you there are you real he prays he waits and nothing just as i thought sergey goes back to the party gara rather goes back to the party party's harder than ever before and he passes out and he has a dream in his dream gara's back in school and he's sitting on the front row and the teacher says gara you're a bad boy go sit at the back of the room with all the bad boys so gara is ashamed and humiliated he gets up in front of the class and has to make his way all the way back where the bad boys are seated at the back of the classroom and when he gets to the back of the classroom there sits jesus this is apparently some religious experience that he's claimed that he's had and now he's brian here is teaching this as if it's the word of god jesus was seated in the back of the room with the bad boys and gara said you're jesus and jesus says yes i am and you're in the back with all of us bad boys and jesus says yes i am gara says can i sit next to you jesus and jesus says you can sit next to me so gara pulled up his chair and he sat down next to jesus and then he said jesus can i touch you jesus said gara you can touch me and gara touched jesus and when gara tells me the story tears always come to his eyes and he says i suddenly was filled with the perfect sense of well -being and i just knew everything was going to be all right because jesus was in the back with the bad boys and i could touch him and i touched him and i just knew everything's going to be all right and i began to sob and i began to cry and i woke up to a brand new life and gara alexei was still the front man and ruski and they're still rocking hard but they sing a lot about jesus these days amen and this is supposed to prove that his newly modified gospel this other gospel he's preaching is supposedly the true one this is not the gospel now what he's pointing to is the chair setup that he used to describe penal substitution and you heard it just from his words right there he's saying this the idea that christ died for your sins is your substitute he said that is not the gospel yep that's right he just flat out attacked it hear it again amen this is not the gospel that is not the gospel god does not turn away from us because we are sinful god is yet it says that we turned away from god that we are enemies of god that god sent christ to reconcile us to the father somebody's turned away and it took christ's blood on the cross as our substitute to save us it's like help me out jesus god has always been like there's never been a time when god was not like we haven't always known this but now we do when do you ever see jesus doing this and he's turning the chair around and making it so that god is turning his back on humans do you ever do you ever see jesus saying you are so sinful that i cannot look upon you revelation chapter 21 he who is seated on the throne said behold i am making all things new also he said write this down for those for these words are trustworthy and true and he said to me it is done i am the alpha and the omega the beginning and the end to the thirsty i will give from the spring of water of life without payment the one who conquers will have this heritage and i will be his god and he will be my son but as for the cowardly the faithless the detestable as for murderers the sexually immoral sorcerers idolaters and liars their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur which is the second death you mean like that you find it in matthew mark luke or john where jesus is walking down the street he's oh no my goodness there's a sinner cannot look at them i'm gonna have to take this other street you tip five times no three strikes and you're out you've been married five times no and yet in revelation 2 which i just read to the churches in thyatira jesus said that that sexual immorality sexually immoral woman jezebel needed to repent and those who were participating in her sexual immorality needed to repent or he was going to strike their children dead huh weird huh do you ever see jesus do that but in the gospel story there are those who do exactly that he's selectively quoting scripture and omitting other portions that disagree with him who say you're so sinful i can't eat with you i can't speak with you i can't associate with you your sinfulness will contaminate my holiness i can have nothing again this is a red herring nothing to do with you i must prove my purity by ostracizing you who does that in the gospel stories it doesn't happen in the gospel stories that happens on the day of judgment when christ sends those who are unbelievers into the lake of fire and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever and ever and ever the pharisees can i tell you that god is not like the pharisees god i agree but that's a red herring is not revealed to us in the pharisees god is not a pharisee god is like jesus god has always been like there's never been a time when god was not like we haven't always known this this is the gospel this thing that he's been teaching that doesn't have anything to do with christ dying for our sins as our substitute that he said wasn't the gospel in other words since he's contradicting the gospel that paul received from jesus he's teaching a false gospel and he's under the occur he's under the curse the anathema of galatians chapter 1 verses 6 through 8 so he's saying this is the gospel so every time the the chair for humanity turns its back on god god turns around and gets in front of that person that's the gospel no it isn't the gospel is clearly laid out for us in scripture and you haven't said what scripture says hasn't you haven't said the same thing at all you've said something very different and when at last you'd say i'm too tired to run anymore god says god's disposition toward you is unchanging because god is immutable he never changes and yet god's word reveals that god is both loving and wrathful both his disposition towards you is love there flows from the heart of god a river of fire that is nothing but pure love it'll torture you until you do this yeah so apparently that's his explanation for the wrath of god that's just god's love misunderstood and just turn toward it and say i'm not gonna run anymore i'm not gonna fight anymore i'm not gonna resist anymore i give up go ahead love me and that's not what the bible says regarding repentance and the forgiveness of sins that's something different that's the gospel no it's not that's a false gospel that's the gospel no it's not that will send people to hell like you to stand with me done yeah you don't get to pray for us so there you go jonathan martin and renovatus what are they equal to well they're that's the new uh rob bell brian mcclaren team you know they've been added to the emergent folks and and of course jonathan martin's very good friends with stephen furtick so i'd be interested to see if this false gospel ends up infecting him as well i i think i've said enough what'd you think love to get your feedback if you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of fighting for the faith you could do so my email address is talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com