April 8, 2019 Show with Chad Vegas on “The Vital Role of the Holy Spirit in the Salvation of Sinners”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century Gospel Minister, George Norcross, in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this eighth day of April, 2019.

Chad Vegas on Sovereign Grace Church and His Path to Reformed Theology

And I am thrilled to have on for the first time a man. If I could change my name to any name on the planet Earth, it would be Chad Vegas, because I think it's the coolest name that has ever been given to a child born of a woman.

And this is a name that could easily be a private detective name in a movie. But Chad is the founding pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Bakersfield, California. And he's going to be speaking at the upcoming East Coast Ministers Conference being conducted by the Banner of Truth here in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

And that's going to be on the theme, I Believe in the Holy Spirit. And today we are going to be speaking on the vital role of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of sinners. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Chad Vegas.

Hi, how are you, Chris?

I'm doing great, Chad. And let me give our email address out immediately for those of our listeners who want to join us on the air with a question for you in regard to the vital role of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of sinners.

And of course, since you're a pastor, we're going to extend and broaden that for our audience. If they want to ask you a question on any theological issue, they can do that at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And as always, please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

First of all, Chad, if you could, let us know about the Sovereign Grace Church of Bakersfield, California.

Yeah, so, not associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, but I think you guys are familiar with on the East Coast, but we're not as familiar without here. In 2007, it was actually Sunday, January 21st, 2007 was our first Sunday, started gathering some people in September of 06 to plant this church here in Bakersfield, which is my hometown where I was born and raised.

It was a large, well, it really was an evangelical mega-church. My theology shifted in a reformed direction, and I didn't really want to cause issues there, and at the same time, the city I was pastoring in was growing quite quickly.

In fact, in the decade of 2000 -2010, it was the fastest growing city in California. I think we grew in that 10-year span by 101 ,000 people. And so I thought, hey, this is a great opportunity to plant a church, so we did.

Praise God. Now, I'm not a numbers person who attaches value to any particular congregation according to the number of people that they have there, because you could have one of the most biblically faithful churches in any given area that's small numerically because of the fact that they're teaching the truth, and I'm popular, but that's not always the case.

I have modern-day heroes like John MacArthur and others who have very large congregations. At least, they're very large for Reformed Baptists and Calvinists. And so tell us about the difference that you have experienced going from pastoring a mega-church to Sovereign Grace Church of Bakersfield, California.

Well, I mean, the initial difference was dramatic, obviously, because I was one of 12 pastors, so there were more pastors on the staff than were people in my original church. And even when we gathered our initial core group at 30, our church I was at was larger than that, you know, somewhere in the 40 region.

So that was dramatically different, just right off the cuff. I mean, there were 3 ,500 people or so in that church. But just as far as what it was like, it was a lot more lonely initially, as far as the community I was a part of, but as far as just as a pastor, I was on my own.

And an incredible time. I think for us, the big difference was trying to understand and work through Reformation. We saw a lot of people get saved and baptized over the years, which we're thankful for.

We've seen a lot of people move in a more Reformed or Rodley Evangelical. We've seen both of those things happen. Learning curve for us and difference for us has been trying to understand what it means to go from being kind of this Rodley Evangelical to, now, how does it show up in the shape of ministry and pastoral ministry in the church to now be this confessionally Reformed guy,.

Right?

That's a big shift.

Oh, yeah.

And I mean, I believe, if you will, at the church I was at before, I believed in the doctrines of grace. But I wasn't confessional, and I had no idea how those doctrines of grace really connected with the kind of ministry I was to be doing.

I mean, I was believing in the doctrines of grace and helping a church promote purpose-driven ministry, and I didn't recognize the disconnect for a long time. What I did is when I left, in part, to plant this church, and so just learning how to work out what does pastoral ministry actually look like biblically, as opposed to sort of what I thought it was in the context of a kind of seeker-sensitive...

Yeah, I am continually baffled by some friends and brothers who are fellow Reformed Christians who seem to still, for some reason, be enamored with Rick Warren, and I have to remind them, do you realize that he calls Pope Francis his pope?

I mean, this kind of a strange kind of a phenomenon, but I'm sure that not every single thing that Rick Warren says is false, but to be enthusiastic about the direction he is going is strange for me when someone is already enlightened by the Reformed faith, so that's what makes it even more strange.

But what we typically do on Iron Trip and Zion Radio when we have a first-time guest such as you, is we have them give a summary of their salvation testimony, including the kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any, and what providential circumstances our Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

Chad Vegas's Salvation Testimony and Early Exposure to Christianity

Yeah, my father was a police officer. He had been in Vietnam in a patrol sergeant in the Army, etc., then he had become a police officer in our local police department. My mom was a hairdresser, and like I said, I was born and raised here in Bakersfield in this town.

They were not believers in any way, shape, or form. We were... There was no... About nine days before, it was actually nine days before I turned seven, my father was killed in the line of duty, and at that point, you know, a lot of questions started in my mind about what happens after death and what's this all about, even as I don't fully understand it, obviously.

And walking through that, my mom started dating, and life went on. For some time there, we actually got a bit, especially me, we got caught up a bit with a neighbor down the street who was very much into New Age priesthood, big into...

I was reading a lot of those kinds of times, and my mom was dating another man who was just a great guy when I was in fifth grade, who we were excited about. She was planning to marry him. They were going to get married, and then he got killed.

Wow.

Yeah.

And that was a kind of a second dramatic situation in which I wondered, you know, who's God? What's going on? I mean, I had heard of Christianity because of things like Little House on the Prairie, you know what I'm saying?

Like, American television in the 80s, if you will. I had heard of that kind of stuff. We're in my public school singing Christmas carols, like that sort of stuff. But that's about all the exposure to Rick got killed.

My neighbor, the priestess, basically told us that my mom had killed people in her former life and this was karma coming around again.

Wow.

Yeah.

And that, I mean, I was going to sixth grade, and I realized at that point, you know, it sounds like a strange thing to think about in the sixth grader, but I thought, man, you know, I wouldn't have put it in this language, but essentially, world views have consequences.

And so, a terrible understanding of things. So I was looking for something else. At that point, a friend invited me to a Baptist church. I heard something maybe that roughly approximated the gospel, but I'm not sure it was the gospel.

What I heard was, if you don't want to go to hell, but you want to go to heaven, you got to believe in Jesus. So come down this aisle. So I was like, okay, well, I don't want to go to hell. So I went down, this guy prayed with me.

I started saying at that point, I started professing, yeah, I believe in Jesus. But then they never took me back to church. So through junior high and high school, I just started looking around. I went to one of my best friends was Mormon.

His dad was a stake bishop, so I went over there for a little bit and looked at that. Went to the Roman Catholic church in my neighborhood, checked that out. One of my other close friends, a Jehovah's Witness, went and checked that out.

I just knew, actually, what was interesting is when I went to the Mormon church and the Jehovah's Witness church, though I knew nothing about them, the Lord kindly, graciously made it very clear to me, hey, these are cults, this is bizarre.

So I didn't go. I didn't keep that up. And in high school, I found a church youth group that I started going to on my own. And some kids there, actually, a junior in high school, I didn't have a ride.

I was a freshman. This junior in high school came up to me, and he started offering me rides. He actually went about 20 minutes out of his way each direction every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night to bring me to church.

So I was coming, hearing some of the Word, and then it was in college where I really went and met the woman who became my wife and another friend, and they pressed on me, especially this other friend, pressed on me about, are you going to follow Christ or not?

So I started, I would say, following Christ sincerely, probably when I was eight.

And how and when did you discover the doctrines of sovereign grace? Because obviously you had said earlier that even when you were pastoring the megachurch, even though you weren't being logically consistent with the doctrines of grace, you had already embraced them.

So tell us about that.

Discovering the Doctrines of Grace and the Shift from Seeker-Sensitive Ministry

Yeah, yeah. So I was attending this church, this megachurch, I ended up becoming a pastor at. At the time I was attending it, it wasn't a megachurch at that time, but I was attending it in my early 20s, right after I graduated college.

My wife and I were going there. I was teaching high school at the time, I had a public high school, and I was helping with a Bible club. And one of the high school kids in the Bible club came to me and asked me some questions about the Bible.

He said he had gone to a church and it was some kind of a Word of Faith sort of service, and there was all the, you know, laughing in the Spirit and being slain in the Spirit,.

Et cetera.

And he came and asked me, he said, oh, Mr. Vegas, what do you think about that? And I said, oh, I don't think that's biblical. That's not good. He said, why not? I said, that doesn't sound right. He said, can you show me the Bible?

And I told him, yeah, I don't know that I can. And he actually looked at me, I remember this 16-year-old kid looked at me right dead in the eyes and said, you're going to hold yourself up as a Christian teacher on this campus, don't you think you ought to know more about your faith?

And I looked at him and I said, yeah, I think I should. So we, do you have any ideas for me? You know, and he said, why don't you ask your church? And I said, well, that's not been super helpful thus far.

But on that Sunday, I went to church and they had a thing in the bulletin about a conference and the college group was going to a Bible conference. And it sounded like a disease to me at the time when I read it, because I'd never heard of it or didn't know what it was, but it said Bible conference, so I thought I'd go and it was a Ligonier conference.

I went to the Bible conference with the college group, the Ligonier conference, and it was actually at John MacArthur's church.

Double whammy, double whammy there.

So I had John MacArthur, Sinclair Ferguson, and I remember sitting there in the pew thinking, why haven't I been told this my whole life, right? And being sore on one occasion and told him that when he was preaching on the love of God at that conference, that was actually in the fall of 1998, he was preaching on the love of God.

I had a second thought. I suddenly, my heart burned within me, and I walked out to the bookstore and I bought every book that they had available, and I went over to these seminary booths. I didn't know what a seminary was.

I walked up and asked them, what's a seminary? They said it's a place where pastors get trained. I said, I don't want to be a pastor, but I'd like to learn the Bible, can I come? And they said yes, so I applied to a seminary and ended up going to seminary, and then a year later, the church I was at said, hey, you've got some training, why don't you come.

On here?

And so I did, and started serving with them and preaching. You know, things sort of settled down. I now believe these doctrines are great, but I'm at this church. I think they go together, and I was one of these guys who thought, my doctrine is here, but method is neutral.

And I didn't realize at the time that method is really determined by what you believe about who God is, and how he works, and who man is, and what his need is, etc. And so at some point, I came to that realization and planted a path.

Praise God. And you are going to be speaking at the conference that we mentioned before, the East Coast Ministers Conference for the Banner of Truth, and I just really love this conference, and as you told me before the show started, this is your first time not only speaking at one, but your first time attending a Banner of Truth conference, and tell us something about what you will be addressing underneath the heading of, I believe, in the Holy Spirit.

What would be the sub-topic, if you will, underneath that heading that you will be addressing?

The Holy Spirit, Ordinary Means of Grace, and the East Coast Ministers Conference

Well, you're going to laugh, because I feel I'm not entirely certain yet. And the reason is, so, you know, I'm also speaking at the West Coast Conference, and Ian Hamilton FaceTimed with me about the West Coast Conference and said, I need two topics from you, I want them to be on the New Covenant, Ministry of the Holy Spirit, I'd like you to focus, you know, think about these things, and so I have titles for those messages, and they're titles and texts, and I know where I'm going with those messages, but the East Coast Conference, I said, what do you want me to do?

He said, here are the titles that everybody else is doing, you just preach the closing.

Sermon.

And I said, okay, but is there a topic? No, just do a pastoral exposition of some text. Oh, okay. I know it needs to be on the Holy Spirit, and I know it needs to be a pastoral exposition.

Of...

At this point, I haven't landed entirely on what text that will be, I have a couple of ideas bouncing around as far as, I've got a few texts I'm studying to that end. I also recognize I'm one of the guys who's not coming in with a Scottish brogue who quotes Owen as if we were roommates, you know what I'm saying?

So I want to be mindful of studying the text. Well, but my hope is just to encourage these brothers there in the power of the Holy Spirit to work through the ordinary means of grace to trust His people, and not to think that we somehow, by our efforts, can gin up some sort of...

You know, and so I have a few passages I'm looking at, and I'm just wanting to encourage the deacons, etc., to Christ.

Amen.

That's my goal, but I don't know yet where the Lord will providentially guide me. As far as the text I'm going to expose, and I have like a...

Well, I am looking forward to it, and I will be addressing this or announcing this information later, but I just want to make sure that I do so. For those of our listeners who may have to leave listening early, the Banner of Truth East Coast Ministers Conference is going to be held May 28th through the 30th, and that's going to be in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at the Elizabethtown College.

And just so you know, the May 28th through the 30th is a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And the theme is, as I just mentioned, I Believe in the Holy Spirit. The speakers include Chad Vegas, who I am interviewing right now, Jeff Kingswood, who is going to be my guest, God willing, on Tuesday, the 23rd of April.

Looking forward to interviewing Jeff for the first time, and I have really been blessed by his preaching, not only at the Banner of Truth Conference, but also at the church where I am a member, Grace Baptist Church, where he has visited and preached.

Terry Johnson is also going to be an upcoming guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the 6th of May, God willing. David Vaughn, who is a Reformed Baptist missionary in France. Stephen J. Nichols, who is the president of the college founded by R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries Reformation Bible College.

Michael Morales, and as I said, Chad Vegas. So please, if you want to register for this conference, the East Coast Ministers Conference, May 28th through the 30th, go to BannerofTruth .org, BannerofTruth .org, click on events, and then click on East Coast Ministers Conference.

We do have a question from Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and Arnie wants to know, Is there words of advice you could give not only to pastors, but Christians in general, who put too much emphasis on the importance of the size of a congregation where they are either shepherding or where they are a member?

It seems to be a preoccupation on the minds of many Christians. They don't think a church is valuable unless it is humongous in size, and I'm not saying anything bad against the megachurches, but they are easier to get lost in, they are easier to avoid church discipline, and they tend to be less authentic and sound in their theology, which is why they attract a large crowd, because it seems that the truth is so unpopular today.

Can you please give any words of counsel or advice to our listeners?

The Faithfulness of Pastoral Ministry Is Not Measured by Church Size

Yeah, well, I think he loads some of the answers to his own question, and the question, I mean, obviously, it's not that the Lord is not concerned with saving and building up people, and he doesn't count them or know them himself, but it isn't really our responsibility to know the number of his elects, nor to figure out how many ought to be gathered in our local congregation.

I mean, at this point, I think the past calling is really clear, it's really well laid out.

In Scripture.

Preach the word in season and out of season, pray for the saints, care for them, shepherding the flock of God among us, visiting your people. These sorts of things aren't attached to numbers, they're not attached to whether your church is able to afford to pay you bi-vocationally or full-time, they're not attached to how well you're known, what people think of you, as far as whether you're relatively popular.

For me, the big change shifted my understanding of pastoral ministry, particularly while I was at a megachurch, fear of God with regard to a passage like Hebrews 13, 17, where it says about obey your leaders, submit to them, for they are keeping watch over you.

And I remember asking our elders, how are we going to account for the couple thousand people we don't even know? I mean, I see them in the grocery store and they say, hi, pastor, and I have no idea who.

They are.

And I'm just giving an account for them, have I given much thought to needing to know the sheep for my care, and what does that look like for me in pastoral ministry? I'm not suggesting, for example, I want to be careful here, that someone like John MacArthur whose church is 10 ,000 people or whatever it is is therefore unfaithful because he can't name all 10 ,000 people.

I imagine he has a group of elders and under-shepherds who serve alongside of him who know all of.

Those.

Personally, I'm not even interested anymore in being involved in a megachurch. I want to know and care for and pray for the people whom Christ has entrusted to my care. I want to be able to give an account for them.

Amen. I had to chuckle when I was interviewing Phil Johnson, who's a friend of mine, and in fact he is the most frequently interviewed guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, the executive director of Grace to You, John MacArthur's media ministry.

I had to chuckle when I was interviewing him because he was telling me that he runs a Bible study at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, which is sort of like a church within a church. He said, we're sort of like a small church of about 500 people.

I said, Reform Baptists would think that is a megachurch, Phil. I mean, just to give you some perspective on Reform Baptists.

Yeah, that's probably generally true. I mean, he's called Grace Life, I think. Pastors and elders, I know that's what they do. They've essentially accommodated the size of that church by having these kind of almost, you know, full power to them, I guess.

I'm sorry?

I said, God bless them. I'm not particularly interested in all of that kind of administration. I'd just rather care for the people and know them and, you know, so.

Amen. And by the way, folks, pray because Phil is working on having John MacArthur return to Orange Rep and Zion Radio for his second interview on this broadcast. And so please pray that that comes to fruition.

And I hope it comes to fruition soon. I've been eager to have John back on the show. It's been a long time. And I am really waiting with bated breath to hear good news from Phil. We're going to go to our first break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for our guest today, Chad Vegas, primarily on the vital role of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of sinners. But you may ask other questions involving Christian theology and pastoral issues.

Please send your emails to ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And don't go away. We'll be right back with Chad Vegas after these messages. Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, announcing a new website with an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a Christian perspective.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is Chad Vegas, founding pastor of the Sovereign Grace Church of Bakersfield, California.

We are discussing the vital role of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of sinners. We're also promoting the East Coast Ministers Conference of the Banner of Truth where our guest Chad is going to be speaking on the roster of other speakers and that is going to be held Tuesday the 28th of May through Thursday the 30th of May in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at the Elizabethtown College.

For more details, go to BannerofTruth .org. We have a listener who has a question that is somewhat off topic but we will take it since our guest is a pastor and it is a pastoral question for certain. We have David in Ada, Ohio who says, We are having an upcoming Bible study about the death of infants and where do they go?

We know they are under the curse because they have died but do the scriptures give any indication as to where the infants who die in infancy go? Thank you and God bless. This is a very controversial subject that is sure to get some people upset no matter how you answer it.

In fact, as you know Chad, there are Reformed brothers who disagree on this question even though they may be in lockstep in most other theological areas. But if you could give us your view on this.

Elect Infants, the Holy Spirit, and the Death of Infants

I have to make a great scriptural argument for it because I cannot say that I have ever done a kind of intensive biblical study on that particular topic. I know that there are things that we can say. Certainly every infant who is conceived is conceived in sin and guilt in that sense.

And so we condemn. Yet we see examples of texts, for example, when David is praying for a son who has died and he seems to be quite certain he is going to see that son who died in infancy in heaven in some way.

Though the text is disputed, I know. It looks as if there is some way in which God has saved that infant. Obviously when we consider a text like, which is extraordinary, so I don't want to make a big theological case out of it, but a text like John the Baptist seems to be regenerate even in the womb.

Obviously we know that that's a possibility. The London Baptist Confession sums up this way. They say elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit who works when and where and how he pleases of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.

So this would be a kind of extraordinary circumstance in the sense that the elect are ordinarily called by the ministry of the Word. But while we will all agree that the elect are ordinarily called by the ministry of the Word and regenerated and given the gift of faith in Christ, that's what ordinarily happens.