Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / June 27, 2021 | Good Question - Is There Hope for Exvangelicals?

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June 27, 2021 | Good Question - Is There Hope for Exvangelicals? · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great music?
0:06
SPEAKER_00: If you're a 70s person.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm so nervous about this morning and excited.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, we're in a series called Good Question.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about it.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: And um I'm speaking on what I'm speaking about today because last week Connor gave this tremendous talk about something that's as current as this spring.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: And that is uh even more current than COVID.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: It is the rise in the number of people who are leaving church, according to statistics for the first time in American history.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh less than 50% of people now attend church, but many of them aren't watching online.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: They have not just left uh the if you consider the church uh maybe a huge hotel with a number of different rooms for different denominations or whatever else, they've not only moved, they've just they haven't moved from one room to the other or into their own private room, they've left the hotel entirely.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: And so he asked the question is it okay to leave the church to not be religious uh but yet to be spiritual?
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, uh his conclusion basically uh was close to the end.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: He put these questions up on the screen.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Is it okay to disengage from God's holy church because you don't feel like it's relevant to you and create your own personal religion?
1:52
SPEAKER_00: His answer was no.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: His answer was yes, however, to this question Is it okay to ask deep questions, struggle with your faith, get angry at Satan's work in this world, and pray it was different?
2:06
SPEAKER_00: His answer was yes.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Now, the difference between what Connor did last week and what I'm doing this week, which is very much related, is that Connor's message was to those of you who are close to the edge, thinking about stepping out of church.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: It was a very compassionate, very understanding message in which he spoke to your heart.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: He talked to you uh personally about what you you desire.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: So if you are one of those folks who uh is considering uh not being religious anymore, but trying to continue being spiritual, that's the message you need to listen to.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: You need to go back and listen to that.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: What I'm going to do in this message, which is entitled, What's the Deal with Exvangelicals, is I'm gonna back up a little bit and I'm gonna talk to those of you who have loved ones, family members or friends who've walked away from the church or walked away from the faith, and ask a couple of questions.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: Why is there a rise in this happening right now, especially among celebrity Christians?
3:17
SPEAKER_00: And is there hope for exvangelical?
3:21
SPEAKER_00: So um, so I need prayer.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: This is the very uh sort of beginning of this.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: I started working on this, reading about this, and shared it with the board a week ago in California, asked for them to feed dozens of Christian leaders to give me thoughts about it.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: So I decided, even though this is not my, you know, final, nothing I'm gonna put into print, I wanted to share it with you where I am in this process, and so let's start with uh asking God for help.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Father, this is such an important issue to so many of us because we have loved ones who have walked away from the faith or are considering doing so, and we ask that you may guide us as we study this and as we look at some uh social trends and it's and some verses out of the Bible this morning.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: We ask this because we believe it's what you want of us in Jesus' name.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: So uh about a month ago, um, a little over a month ago, this headline swept across the country.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Kevin Max, uh, who's sung with a couple of Christian groups, including DC Talk, announced that he's ex-vangelical.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: Ex-vangelical.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
4:34
SPEAKER_00: He said, um, hello, and he tweeted, my name is Kevin Max, I'm an exvangelical.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: And later on he tweeted, I still follow the universal Christ, whatever that is.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: And he was very vague about his theology, but he was very clear about his political views.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: I am anti-war, anti-hate, pro-love, pro-L B G Q I A.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: There was a number of letters there.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Pro-BLM, anti-narrow-mindedness, and so forth.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Now, Carrie Livgun reminded me as I was talking with him about this this week, that Kevin is the same guy who played uh Kerry a little over a decade ago in a movie made of Kerry's life, The Imposter.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: And um I'm not gonna tell you what Kerry said about him, you can ask him yourself.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: But um but anyway, that's that's Kevin Max, and that's recent news.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot of recent news about this, and it's all about exvangelicals.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is an exvangelical?
5:41
SPEAKER_00: An evangelical, evangel means gospel, an evangelical is someone who believes the gospel, that Jesus came and he died for our sins, that he is the only way to salvation, that the Bible is inspired, it comes from God to tell us how to live, that there's a heaven, and so forth.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Um so an exvangelical is someone who's been there, who's perhaps grown up in the church, and now has walked away.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes they state very clearly I'm an ex-evangelical, sometimes they say I'm no longer a Christian.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: One of the most famous was just a year ago, Marty Sampson, who wrote a number of Hillsong songs, a Hillsong Worship Leader, very famous.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: He walked away and said, I'm not a Christian anymore.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: Abraham Piper, son of the theologian pastor John Piper, has his own website.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: He got excommunicated, his dad actually excommunicated him from their church, uh, Bethel, but then and then he came back, but then he's left again, and now he's very he's constantly tweeting and so forth.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: So uh then there's Jen Hapmaker, some of you knew her quite well, eight, nine, ten years ago, lives in Austin.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: She was known as uh sort of the young Beth Moore.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh she had a number of followers, some of my family uh was relatively close to her down there.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: She she and her husband founded a church in Austin, Texas, and so forth.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: But maybe I'll come back to her later because she's very, very interesting.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: She's walked away, she's announced that she and Brandon, her husband of 30 years, have broken up and so forth.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh Paul Maxwell, former Moody Bible Institute prof, writer for desiring God website, John Piper.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: I am no longer a Christian.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Now, all these people are coming out very publicly with this.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: Joshua Harris, some of you heard, he was maybe one of the first to come out, the 1990s author of I Kiss Dating Goodbye.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: He was a leader in the purity movement in the 1990s, and you can imagine as he walked away.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: Here's the Wall Street Journal headline Joshua Harris kisses Christianity goodbye.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that funny?
7:47
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was pretty funny.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, I kiss dating goodbye.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: Get that a kiss dating, you know, those two words right there.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, wake up.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, um, but this is personal, right, for a lot of us.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe your loved one, certainly my members of my extended family who today have come out publicly on Facebook and so forth, saying, I've walked away, I'm no longer an evangelical, uh, I hate, uh, you know, so it's very personal to a lot of us, right?
8:24
SPEAKER_00: I would I don't I don't want to see your hands.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: But but so this is this has been happening for thousands of years to some extent, but wow, why the rise in this today?
8:37
SPEAKER_00: Why does it seem more common?
8:39
SPEAKER_00: And why do the people who are leaving, celebrities, oftentimes, or it seems always, who are coming out of the closet, for variety, by the way, there's a variety of reasons that they state when they're coming out.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: The reasons sort of break down, as you might guess, into moral, social, political, and spiritual moral reasons, uh, they they want a moral lifestyle which disagrees with the morals of the Bible, right?
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's the gay thing or whether it's sleeping around or whatever else.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: So the moral reasons, they say I don't buy the morality of evangelicalism, I've stepped away.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Or there's social.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Social, you know, uh all they they get into a circle social.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: I have a close friend that used to be my best friend, you know, 20 years ago or so.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Gotten involved hugely in a social circle in another town that was completely inimical to Christianity and so forth.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: And and in order to go along, uh, in order to get along, he's gone along.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: And and it and you've seen that.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: Socially, there's this is why kids you know, leave the faith when they go to college, right?
9:52
SPEAKER_00: So many kids, hello, are you with me this morning?
9:55
SPEAKER_00: You only maybe you when you went away to college, you lost your faith for a while.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: Because the social environment just puts pressure on you, Romans chapter 12, 1 and 2.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Or there's the there's the political, especially lately with the whole Trump thing.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's uh but it it predates that.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: It's just like I totally disagree with the fact that most evangelicals are conservatives, that the and so forth.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: I prefer to go along with the majority of everything I see from Hollywood and on TV and so forth, and you know, I'm really hate, I agree with them that all of you evangelicals are, I don't know, racist, homophobes, and so forth.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: So there's political reasons.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: So you've because you about half of these people that I've listed here, that's what they put down.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, they put down, I'm a progressive, I hate all of you, uh, you know.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: And and but the final is spiritual.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you take a number of people, uh, a missionary daughter, missionary child named Andrea Gully, uh, Kenya, Kenya.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: And she grew up, and her family was just amazing.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: She grew up daughter of missionaries, and her and they were in medicine, and her mother was always bringing people home.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: She was healing them, and her father was going to the hospital, and she began to serve, and then her heart began breaking.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: She thought, why would God allow so much suffering?
11:17
SPEAKER_00: And then she moved up to Nairobi and started helping a Christian who suddenly lost his wife and children in an accident and couldn't get over his grief.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: And then she began serving in the very famous largest, um, largest slum in the world is there in Nairobi.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: She's working there, and you got all these babies dying of AIDS, and she's just finally had enough.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: She said, if God doesn't care as much as I do, I I have no use, I have no use for the God of the Bible.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And she walked away.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual problem with the injustice or lack of compassion of God.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
11:50
SPEAKER_00: So there's a variety of reasons.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: There's not one simple reason, okay?
11:55
SPEAKER_00: But so so that's why, what leads me to the question, what's the deal with exvangelicals?
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, I so as I'm reading, as I'm trying to figure this out and I'm reading, and I'm really startled, and I can't believe there's so many Christian celebrities doing this.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: I I'm looking at three different books.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: There's a book called The Holy Longing, The Search for a Christian Spirituality, uh, by an Anglican, really great stuff here.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: There's uh there's a woman that I knew, she used to be a prophet Wheaton, now she's a professor at George Fox in Oregon, and happens to be a friend from years ago of my family, perceiving the cultural sea that is our home, spiritual formation and western for 21st century culture.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: And the third book that analyzes modern culture is is is now being called the the best book on culture in America in the last 10 years.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, just published about a year ago.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: Everybody who's anybody is reading this 400-page book.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, but it's it is a great, great book, and I haven't finished it.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Carl Truman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: If you want something to read, that's gonna be phenomenal.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: That'll be it.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: Now, I I found something as they all, all three of these listed reasons why people are walking away from the faith or why culture is going the way it is, and I saw that among their reasons they each had one in common.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: And the one they had in common centered around M-E-M.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: In the Holy Longing, uh, Dr.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Rollhauser said one of the three reasons why people find it so hard to be genuinely spiritual today is narcissism.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, narcissism, for those of you that know, some of you will remember Greek mythology.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: You grew up, narcissus was the Greek youth who was so handsome that he fell in love with his image in the water.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: And so as a result, uh Zeus turned him into a flower called the narcissist, which likes to hang over water.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
13:58
SPEAKER_00: So narcissists, narcissism is love of self, or I'm all about me.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: It's and and do we see that today or not?
14:06
SPEAKER_00: On Facebook.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Right?
14:09
SPEAKER_00: It's all about me and what I'm doing, and I expect everybody to care, you know.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: And no matter what you say on there, people will care.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: Second, the all three of them they use different words, but it's all the same thing.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Lisa McMinn's uh word for it was personal autonomy.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Auto means self, namas means law.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm a lot of myself.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I belong to me, I own myself, and I'm the boss of me.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: I belong to me, I'm the boss of me.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: I I I I wanted to just put one of those, but I couldn't, because they're different.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, one of them is who owns me?
14:50
SPEAKER_00: The answer is me owns me.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Who's the boss of me?
14:55
SPEAKER_00: You're not, I'm the boss of me.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so personal autonomy.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: I had narcissism, personal autonomy, and in this amazing book, he called it expressive individualism.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: I must be true to me.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: And he says, what's happened in this?
15:11
SPEAKER_00: All these are the all these three people say, this is just lately, this is just in the last 10 to 20 years in the West, okay?
15:19
SPEAKER_00: And what uh Dr.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: Truman says is today people have this certain idea that their heart is the what they feel is the most important thing about them.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: And they define themselves, their identity, based on, he says, either psychological or so in or sexual terms.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: And no one else, because that's inside of me, no one else can either understand that unless you tell them.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: And no one can argue with you about it because it's you, right?
15:49
SPEAKER_00: And so they need to just simply accept what you say about yourself.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: That's expressive individualism.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Let me summarize these again.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Narcissism, I'm all about me.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Personal autonomy, I belong to me, I'm the boss of me.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Expressive individualism, I must be true to me.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: These are three of the most insightful writers in the last few years in the West, and they all point to something that they say is very recent, which is an elevation of the personal self as the most important thing in the universe.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
16:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's different, okay?
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Because until very recent times, if you think back to Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or whatever, we all were members of a community.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: If you think back to those movies, what was the most important is what did the community, how did you fit into your family, how did you fit into your community?
16:42
SPEAKER_00: How, you know, you didn't, you weren't free to define yourself or your own rules.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: The rules think Downton Abbey.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: The rules were already set up.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: And you needed to conform to those rules or you would be shamed.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: But suddenly the community, this is, this is, this is, this is where, this is where last week O'Connor eventually got because he said, you know, when you leave and define your own religion, you need to discover what basically Chris McCandless did.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: The fellow, remember, who wrote it from St.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: Louis who went up to Alaska.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm going to do it my own way.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: He ends up starving, that he ends up dying.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: And in his journal, the last entry was his discovery: happiness is only real when shared.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: Now, the Bible would say it's you're defined not just by your community, that's, but you're defined by what I say you are.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Say it's God in community.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: You are not the ruler of yourself.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: So let me move you to six verses in the Bible that I think touch on this.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: All right?
17:50
SPEAKER_00: And the first comes from Genesis chapter 3.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: The serpent was the most cunning of all.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: He said to Eve, Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?
18:00
SPEAKER_00: You'll certainly not die.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: In fact, when you eat it, your eyes will be opened.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: Modern culture, Western culture believes, in fact, even quotes quotes this, the serpent's line as being their theme.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: The Atheist Society quotes this as being a very noble thing, that you should get independence from God, your eyes will be open when you make your own choices.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Be the boss of you.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 3.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Moves to Judges 21, 25.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: And I confess I got some of these passages from the Christian leaders I was dialoguing with about this question just a week ago.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: One of them pointed out, he said, Isn't that like the end of Judges, where it says repeatedly, everyone did that which was right in their own eyes.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: It's very similar to what happened in 1200 BC when they had no king in Israel, when everybody decided to be their own boss.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: And so they said, I'm the boss of me.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: That's personal autonomy.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: Verse number three.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: We move to the New Testament.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus defines the last days of Matthew 24, and he says, Then many will fall away.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: That's a partial answer to my question as I began studying this.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: How come so many more people seem to be falling away than previously?
19:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
19:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, in the 20, you know, in the years, I mean, in my 40 previous years here, whatever, I didn't have, there wasn't a total of that many uh leading Christians that fell away from the faith.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: And then the last days, 2 Timothy 3, Paul says, in the last days, people will be, whoa, look at this, lovers of themselves, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's all about me.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: That was number one, and I must be true to me.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: It's all about me.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: I belong to me, I'm the boss of me.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: And the third is, I must be true to me.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: And that's the last days.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: But the biblical, and this is uh verse number five of the six, I think uh this is my key text for this morning, Romans 14, 7 and 8, which basically says, hmm, wrong.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: You're not your own.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: For none of us lives to himself.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of believers, and none of us dies to himself.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: So then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that the greatest verse you've ever heard?
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that awesome?
20:41
SPEAKER_00: None of us lives, read that with me.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself, for if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: Who do we belong to?
21:03
SPEAKER_00: Remember this context, Romans 14.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: Paul is talking about people are making their own decisions in life, deciding whether they want to sleep around or not, and saying, I can do whatever I want.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of I have personal autonomy.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: And he says, No, you don't.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: You don't, you're not the boss of yourself.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: You don't belong to yourself.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: You actually belong to the Lord.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: And elsewhere he explains, where is it?
21:27
SPEAKER_00: There.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: He explains why.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: You are not your own.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 6.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: And here he's speaking to a church that that that had an individual in it.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: And the church was divided because half of the church was supporting an individual who decided he would, you know, that he would he would uh he would sleep with his mother in law, you know, that he'd he would hook up with her.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: And um and and he says, you're not your own.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: You don't have the right, you don't have the right to boss yourself, you don't have the right to say I.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: I can do whatever I want.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Because you were bought with a prize.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: He owns you.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: You were a slave of sin.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: And now he's bought you.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Now you're a slave of God.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Which reminded, since these were Jewish people that I was talking to, which reminded one of them of Bob Dylan's famous song.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: You know which one this is?
22:24
SPEAKER_00: Gotta serve somebody?
22:26
SPEAKER_00: You may be an ambassador to England or France.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: You may like to gamble.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: You might like to dance.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: You may be the heavyweight champion of the world.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes, indeed.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to serve somebody.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, it may be the devil or maybe the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: You might be a rock and roll addict prancing on stage.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: You might be a businessman or some high-degree thief.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: They may call you doctor or they may call you chief, but you're gonna have to serve somebody.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes, indeed, you're gonna have to serve somebody.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: And Romans says, if you're a Christian, you used to serve sin, you had no choice, but I've moved you on to a different plantation.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: It's my plantation.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean you're completely autonomous and free.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: No, now you serve me.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: Same thing, by the way, that Moses said in the book of Exodus, as we preached it back in February, when they came out of Egypt, he says, You used to serve Pharaoh, but now we serve Yahweh.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: So you don't belong to yourself, you're not your own, you're a bot out of the slave market of sin with a price.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: All right?
23:46
SPEAKER_00: So that's why if you decide that you're going to be autonomous, that you're gonna be the most important person in the world to yourself, that you're gonna be the boss of you, that you're gonna do whatever the heart wants.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be at Woody Allen.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Remember when when uh he he was uh he was he had hooked up with Mia Pharaoh, and I don't think they got married, but then it turned out Mia discovered he was sleeping with their daughter, with Mia's daughter, I mean.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: And Woody Allen came out publicly and said the heart has to do what the heart wants to do.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: So that's that that's that third one.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: That that expressive individualism, I look inside, I see, and I rule myself, and my heart rules me, and God says, No, if you're a believer, you're not your own.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: You have no right to do that, you're bought with a price.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: And yet we we find all kinds of people, including Christians, who, in a sense, put their fist up and say, God, you're not the boss of me.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: And we find that in recent surveys, this is borne out, 30%, it's in a Barnes recent survey, 30% of Americans are born-again Christians, but only one-third of them believe what the Bible teaches.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: And we're talking about the basic things that the Bible teaches.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: In fact, same year, Lifeway came out with a survey, one only one-third of evangelicals, and one-third of evangelicals say Jesus was a good teacher, but he wasn't God.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I will define my own doctrine.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: I will define what I believe.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: So we live in a really interesting time, don't we?
25:26
SPEAKER_00: And then just this year, here's some famous tweets that have been gone viral from a young progressive woman who uh first two weeks was I'm a Christian and I believe proselytizing, that means evangelism is violent.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Second, I am a Christian and I believe LGBQT people are divine and should lead us.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Third tweet, I am a Christian and I don't go to church.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Fourth tweet, I am a Christian and I don't believe the Bible comes from God.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: And those have gone viral.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: And you know that's your question.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: You ask it as holding.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's see.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: You don't believe in evangelism, you don't believe in biblical morality, you don't like the church, and you don't believe the Bible.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: Why are you still a Christian?
26:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what is there about Christianity that you want to hold on to since you've thrown all of it in the trash?
26:19
SPEAKER_00: But that's the world we live in, and this is all.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: Almost all, everything I'm telling you today comes out of this spring, comes out of this year.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: And here's the interesting thing is it used to be that people came out of the closet spiritually or whatever, quietly.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Now they're leaving loudly.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: Now they're leaving loudly.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: Family member, I have a family, extended family member.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: And she comes out, she's married, she has kids and so forth.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: She comes out announcing she's left the faith and she's not really hetero, she's bi and so forth.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: And this is public, and it was clear that that was the first her husband found out about it, too.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And it was just, it was just, and but of course she dives on and says, Oh, uh, she's wonderful, and I admire her for her new choices, you know.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: And but what what the leaving loudly is a part of the me thing, isn't it?
27:10
SPEAKER_00: It's a part of thinking that everything I think is so important that you need to hear it.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: Are these celebrities?
27:18
SPEAKER_00: How in the world, and listen, if I, six months from now, if I suddenly publicize that I'm an ex-evangelical or I've left the faith, I hope your first thought is, who does he think he is?
27:29
SPEAKER_00: How can he be so arrogant to think that we were always that he was our celebrity and we're gonna follow whatever he said?
27:36
SPEAKER_00: But these celebrities certainly do think so.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a guy, Martin Sampson, who's holding the mic just a few months before he changes his mind, telling everybody to lift, raise their hands and worship the Lord and so forth, and then just a few months later comes forth and says, I don't believe any of that, I'm not an evangelical, and I'm publicizing this so that you'll follow me and agree with me.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, isn't there something about that that makes you say, oh, come on, I mean, you're you're not my authority figure.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: And here's what stuns me about uh Jin Hatmaker.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: Some of you read her book and so forth.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: When she publicized uh earlier this year her sort of doctrinal statement, I mean she stated her, she's a wonderful writer, she stated her history, and so listen to this.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: Listen, for those of you with a complicated relationship with church right now, I was a church baby from the womb.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: I came up for the through the youth group, church camp, see you at the pole, purity culture, acquire the fire, DC talk, rededicate your life.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: I went to a Baptist college, I got married at 19.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: I was a pastor's wife.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: We founded a church, so she has the credentials, right?
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Like all of these others.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: But as she goes down through, you know, and mentioning that she and Brandon have split up after 30 years, she has this astounding sentence.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: She says, My therapist, Carissa, told me Friday, you are now able to be known by Jesus in entirely new ways.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: My therapist, Carissa, who's now her spiritual authority figure, right?
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Not God, not the Bible, and somehow is our spiritual authority figure, suddenly, you are now able to be known by Jesus in entirely new ways.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Not you are now able to know Jesus better in entirely new ways.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: Who's most important?
29:44
SPEAKER_00: Jinn's more important than Jesus.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is now able to know you in entirely new ways.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: Is that me culture or is that me culture?
29:57
SPEAKER_00: So um she closes.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: It is good, you are good, Jesus is good, this is all I know for now.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: So um, but you know, it's I th I find this, I find this, I find this startling.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, if you're there, if you're considering leaving, don't listen to this message.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: Listen to last week's message.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Far more compassionate.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm just taking a step back and I'm saying, what is it about modern culture that has caused this explosion in the number of Christians, including celebrity Christians, who are leaving the faith, no longer evangelical, and leaving loudly.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, the only thing I can find that explains it, of all the list of things that people state, is that, yes, on the surface, there are moral reasons or political reasons, you know, or social reasons or spiritual reasons about injustice or God's compassion.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of it comes back to this personal me reason.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: That is, somehow today, uh, it seems to me that all of a sudden I'm the most important person in the universe.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: So um let me close positively in the last uh 10 minutes, five, ten minutes, by just sharing with you uh the question that we really ask ourselves, which is my beloved ex-evangelical, you know, my family, friends, and so forth, is there any hope?
31:28
SPEAKER_00: Is there any possibility of return?
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, I would tell you that fortunately there are uh uh there are a lot of people speaking directly to this issue.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Kaka is uh superstar, he's now retired for the Brazil soccer team, and this is the shirt when he would, after he peeled off and would score a goal, he would he would pull that off and he'd say, you know what, I I'm not afraid to say that I am not my own, that I belong to Jesus.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: And I really appreciate this very recent uh song, sung by uh uh a young group of guys called NYCYP C D, which stands for New York City's Young People's CD, entitled I Am Not My Own, and they actually wrote it here this year, responding to Kevin Max and some of these others that they knew in the rock and roll world who've left the faith.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: Listen to these, listen, not listen, but look at these words.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Tell me not of earthly pleasures, tempt me not with sordid gain, mock me not with earth's illusions, vex me not with honors vain.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: I am weaned from sinful idols, I am henceforth not my own.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: I have given my heart to Jesus, I belong to him alone.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: I am not my own, I am not my own, I belong to Jesus, and I am not my own.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Oh, the blessed rest it brings us to belong to Christ alone.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And the last stanza is weary soul, give up the struggle.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: Cease at length to thyself to own.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: Give yourself away to Jesus and belong to him alone.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: And no matter who you are, you have to stop this morning and say, I live in a world that swirls with the winds of me, M-E.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: And I am, like everyone else, tempted to think that I am the boss of me, that I belong to me, that I must find out who I am and be true to me.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: But none of those things can be found in true Christianity.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: Give yourself away to Jesus and belong to him alone.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Right?
33:51
SPEAKER_00: Is there hope for a beloved ex-vangelical?
33:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, there is.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: There is.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure I'm not gonna ask for hands, but I'm I know that this morning I know a number of stories in this room.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: There are many of you who walked away from the faith in college or some other time, and you've come back to the Lord.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: And if you ask me, as I've looked at the stories of those who've come back as part of my research, I find four factors that seem to be common in the stories of those who've returned to the faith.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: And one is truth.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: One is that somebody stood up and and and told them the truth.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you post that you've left the faith or you've left the closet, whatever you post on Facebook, you're going to find, you look on it, and you're going to find people that go, oh, you're so wonderful, you're so beautiful, even though you've chopped your head off.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: You've so one phenomenal, and I so admire you, and you're going to find so much support, people who ignore the truth, but someone has to speak truth and just say, you know, your GPS is wrong.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: That internal GPS of yours, it happens to be wrong.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: Turn around.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: There's a famous Catholic ethicist today who just came out a couple weeks ago, and he's the head ethics guy for uh for a uh Heritage Foundation or some something.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: And and I I I couldn't believe that he said in a very public, Ryan Anderson is his name in a very public event in this last month.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: He said, uh, Christianity has already been defined.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is a revealed religion, and that's just not Christianity.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: He was in a debate about same-sex marriage, and he simply said, sorry, marriage is a thing, and same-sex relationships just aren't marriage.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Now you don't have to be preachy about it, you don't have to meet and be mean about it, but but you don't throw away the Bible or throw away the faith in order to just get along.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: So, so keep keep truth.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: But the other three factors are just as important.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: That you balance truth with love because so many of these people who have left say, well, it was an abusive church.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: I was abused at church, or people came down on me wrong, or I was in a kind of environment where the Christians were the meanest people around.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, while giving them truth, you really need to show them love and you need to listen and need to understand.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: Third, prayer.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: Hang on and pray persistently, like the nagging woman of Luke 18, and patience, like the prodigal's father.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Truth, love, prayer, patience.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: David Wheaton, professional tennis player in the past, grew up Christian, went to college, lost his faith.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: Today he's returned.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he's the host of a radio program called Christian Worldview.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: This kid who grew up in the church, left the faith, didn't do it loudly back in those days, but is back.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: Or take take take the girl I mentioned to you, grew up, the daughter of missionaries in Kenya, who left the faith because she couldn't understand how God could be so unjust to these babies dying of AIDS and all of the suffering and so forth.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: She's back.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: She's now a writer for Christianity Today when asked, interviewed in an article just this month in Christianity Today, what in the world brought you back when you came out publicly that you had had left the faith?
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, she says one thing was honestly that I wasn't, I didn't find happiness in my new life.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: She was going to bars and she was with a social crowd and they were drinking and so forth.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: She said I'd look at them and I'd think, this is not making me happy, like it is you.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: Second, she said I had memories.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: They were like anchors for my soul, memories of growing up.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: When my dad, who loved the Lord, you know, would spend time with me and I'd ask him hard questions even as a teenager, and he never put me down for it.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: He was always sweet to me, and I knew I knew there was real love there.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: And she said, then beyond that, she said, I I realized where was I going to go to find answers, to find peace, to find the longing in my soul.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: I thought, I thought, you know what?
38:20
SPEAKER_00: I can think of a lot of people who, those people that I felt sorry for who were suffering, that man who'd lost his wife and kids, he hadn't given up his faith.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: And I thought of the examples of people who have it worse than I do, but didn't lose their faith.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: And she said, and then so she said, one morning, I don't know why I did it.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: I woke up and I thought, well, I'm gonna go, I'm just gonna go to church.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: She said I slipped in the back.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: I didn't sing, but I went back the next week.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: And I stayed separate, but I just kept going back.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: And she said, then the words of Jesus came to my heart.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: From that time many of his disciples, this is in John chapter 6, 66, from that time many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: Exvangelical.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Are you gonna go away too?
39:09
SPEAKER_00: Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
39:14
SPEAKER_00: Thou hast the words of eternal life.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: If you want peace, if you want fulfillment, if you want to have your needs met, you won't find them met in leaving the faith.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: You find them met in Jesus.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: As C.S.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: Lewis once said, if you want to get warm, you need to go to a fire.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: If you want to get wet, you need to get in the water.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: If you want to find peace and love and joy and eternal life, you need to go to the thing where those things may be found.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Come unto me.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we pray for our loved ones who are thinking about or have wandered away.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: We suspect that the air that we breathe today, the air of uh personal autonomy and narcissism and stress of individualism, that they are breathing that air and they've found that almost like a virus, it has infected them and doesn't make us love them less.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: We still love them.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: We pray that they'll hear the truth, whether it comes from us or others.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh we pray for them, Lord, faithfully, and we just trust you patiently to bring them home.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, folks.