Latest / Voddie Baucham Sermons / Voddie Baucham - TS&TT Voddie Baucham Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe (Part 2): Where Do We Go From Here

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Voddie Baucham - TS&TT Voddie Baucham Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe (Part 2): Where Do We Go From Here · Voddie Baucham Sermons

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Watching the way that churches, many of them, have responded
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: over the year of Our Lord 2020 has been disheartening.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: I believe that what we are seeing in America.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: Is the rise of a new religion.
• 0:29
  Speaker 4: These challenges that we're living through right now, these are
• 0:31
  Speaker 4: just kind of a preface to what is awaiting us
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: as our culture continues to degenerate.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: You can't have right behaving without right believing. You can't
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: worship God rightly if you don't know God rightly.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: The church has that responsibility.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Take up the sword of the spirit.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: We were to put on the breastplate of righteousness and
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: we have to stand. against the schemes of the devil.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: The church is to be militant, and therefore we can't
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: back down from what God has called us to do.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to The Sword in the Trial, a podcast of
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Founders Ministries. Founders Ministries exists for the recovery of the
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: gospel and the reformation of churches. I'm Jared Longshore.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: I'm Tom Askell.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And here we are with Dr. Votie Bauckham, part two.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: We had so much to talk about with his book
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and with the state of evangelicalism today that we needed
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to have two parts to this conversation.
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, if you hadn't heard the first part, I encourage
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: you to go and listen to it, kind of just
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: laying the field of where we are, marking that field out.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: And now we want to talk about where we go
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: from here.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: But we also want to remind you that we have
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: a conference coming up January 20 through 23, 2022 here
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: in Southwest Florida. Man, Southwest Florida in the winter is
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: a great place to be. Voters are going to be
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: here preaching. You'll be preaching. I'll be preaching.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: James Coates will be preaching. Conrad M.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: Bayway, your coworker in Zambia, will be here along with
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: Travis Allen, who's a pastor up in Greeley, Colorado. So
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: we encourage you to sign up and come be a
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: part of this conference. Our registration is open, but it
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: looks like we may have to cancel or bring it
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: to an end because we will run out of space.
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: So get your registration in early. We'd love to see
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: you here.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, so in our last podcast, brief summary, we talked
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: about the coming catastrophe, the names on the sides of
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the fault lines. And you name people in the book
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: on the wrong side of this fault line are ministries
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: like SBC, Nine Marks, TGC, T4G on the right side
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: of this fault line, the late R.C. Sproul, Tom Askell,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: John MacArthur, Doug Wilson, and there's some others probably on
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: either side. And we were saying it's wild that that exists.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: What are some of the reasons? And we've identified really
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: a lack of courage, some men that are on the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: wrong side that know what to do, but they're not
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: doing it, and then also worldview stuff as a problem,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: people not understanding the times, not understanding just how bad
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: this stuff is. We signaled a little bit about where
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to go from here. We know we do need to
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: build and try to think through how the good guys
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: on the wrong side will come back over eventually if
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the thesis works itself out, which we're convinced it will,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: that this is eventually going to go off into very
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: clear heresy. So let's just spell it out more. We
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: know what we need to do generally, but how do
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: we actually raise a banner? How do you get the
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: right people and the right movements and the right leadership
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: And what should Christians be doing right now?
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: All right, Vody. Give us the answer, man.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Fix it, Vody. Fix it, please. I think one of
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: the things we have to do is we have to
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: continue to press the antithesis. We have to continue to
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: identify not just the erroneous ideas and or events, but
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: we've got to go to the root, right? We can't just...
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: hover around the fruit. We've got to go to the
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: root of this. And we've got to demonstrate that this
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: is another religion. This is another worldview. And I think
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: one of the ways that we do that is that
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: we continue to sort of peel the onion, right? And
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: to look at the other layers. One of the things,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: and this is one of the things that I'm encouraged about,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: is that that the critical social justice movement and the
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: worldview behind it is pressing further and further and further.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: And so now we're seeing the sexual ethic of the
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: critical social justice movement becoming more and more prominent. And
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: a lot of people who are standing over here and
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: either ignoring or going along with the racial, ethnic part
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: inside of this argument, are not willing to go along
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: with the broader intersectional part of this argument. And so homosexual, transgender,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: so on and so forth. And I think this is
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: giving us an opportunity to sort of set the stage
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: and say, This is a worldview issue and we do
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: need to define it in that way. And so now
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: let's get to that next step. And part of that
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: next step is being clear about who we are and
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: what we believe, what God says about these issues and
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: sort of why that leads us to our position in
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: opposition to this.
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: You know, I had a conversation three, maybe four years ago,
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: I forget, with an evangelical leader, key evangelical leader, well-known,
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: about these very things. And he was saying, yeah, the
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: challenge is going to be separating the race issue from
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: the sexual issue. He said, but we've got to do it.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: We've got to do it. And we were talking about
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  Speaker 4: critical race theory, intersectionality, critical theory. He said, these come
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: from a poisoned well, but we can use them because
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: they're basically Augustinian.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: In nature. And I was blown away by that.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And I don't think there's... The illustration is just so bad.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: Like, that came from a poison well.
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  Speaker 2: I don't want to drink it. That's right.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, yeah. But I just... There's no way.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: Because the foundation is the same.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: It is the same. It is the same. And when
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: you look at the literature, right? When you look at literature,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: critical theory, critical race theory literature, you always find feminist... Theory,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: queer theory. I mean, you cannot separate those things. You
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: just can't do it. So it's like saying that we
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: want to study Revelation, really, but we want to really
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: stay away from Johannine theology, right? Well, John's the author
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: of that, you know, so you just you can't do it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: And that's what a lot of people are wanting to do.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And I think that goes back to what we talked
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: about in the last episode. A lot of people want
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: to do that because their relationships and the last decade
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: of being very serious about. you know, racial reconciliation and
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: those types of things and investing in those relationships, those
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: things are leading them to say, no, no, no, we
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: want to figure out how we can have this without that.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: The way you have this without that is to have
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: a biblical understanding of this, right? The reason that there
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: is this problem and this contradiction is because you're accepting
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: that an approach to race and ethnicity that is inherently unbiblical.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: And this approach to race and ethnicity that is inherently
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: unbiblical also embraces these other ideas That are inherently unbiblical.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: You can't have one without the other.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: One of the things I appreciate about the Black Lives
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: Matter movement is the honesty of the founders. We're trained Marxists,
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: and whenever they put it out there, it's not just blacks.
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: It's queers, it's LGBTQ +.
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  Speaker 3: And all of that.
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  Speaker 4: And whenever that got so much spotlight, they took it out.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, that's a commentary. If you've got eyes, just
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: read it. If you've got ears, listen. They're telling us.
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  Speaker 1: They're telling us what they're going to do. And I wonder,
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  Speaker 1: I think we ought to actually do the same thing,
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  Speaker 1: but do it Christianly. And so when it comes to
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: measures moving forward, what to do, you could kind of
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: stay with the poison well analogy. I mean, you actually
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: had somebody that said, this came from a poison well,
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  Speaker 1: but we can use it. We can drink it. And
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: there's people that are wise enough now to go, I
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: don't want to drink that. Like, I'm not going to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: drink that. I'm not going to drink that from a
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  Speaker 1: poison well. I reject that. And that's the not woke
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: people and the not social justice people. But we actually,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: the deal is you have to drink somewhere. So we
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: need wells. We need Christian wells that people can drink from.
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  Speaker 2: We need to go.
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  Speaker 1: Back and really begin those. And so when it comes
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  Speaker 1: to what to do, I could at least start with
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: what not to do, what I could see happening that
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  Speaker 1: I think we should avoid. is like a half measure
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: at this point for the not woke people, where what
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  Speaker 1: we become, the coalition is the not woke people. I
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  Speaker 1: actually wrote a piece recently called Not Woke is Not Enough,
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  Speaker 1: because that's not going.
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  Speaker 2: To do it.
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  Speaker 1: You've got all kinds of unbelievers that are not woke, right?
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  Speaker 1: So not woke is not going.
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  Speaker 3: To be enough.
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  Speaker 1: We need wells and we need people.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And on both sides of this, it's interesting when
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  Speaker 2: you look at woke ideology, not everybody who's embracing woke ideology,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: number one is doing it for the same reason. And
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: not everybody who embraces woke ideology, um, is, is, is
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  Speaker 2: willing to align, right? Same thing with the not woke,
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  Speaker 2: not everybody on the not woke side, um, is willing
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: to align. But I think, and one of the things
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  Speaker 2: I write about in the book, uh, at the end
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: is a second Corinthians 10 approach, right? You know, we
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: do want to destroy arguments and lofty opinions raised against
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: the knowledge of God. Amen. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. We
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: have to do that. But then we have to take
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: every thought captive to obey Christ. It's not an either or.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: It's a both and. And so on the one hand,
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  Speaker 2: I disagree vehemently with those people who say, you know,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: we got to be more, you know, what we're for
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: and not what we're against. No, that's a false dichotomy.
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  Speaker 2: We have to be clear about what we're against and
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: clear about what we're for. Right. But we also have
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: to be clear in terms of what the issues are. Right.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: And what a lot of people want to do is
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: they want to say, you know, no, no, no. Over here,
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: we want to say that, you know, we're for the
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: gospel and we're for the sufficiency of Scripture and we're
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: for the supremacy of Christ and we're for the.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: All of that is great.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: But when we are being attacked by a particular enemy
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: and a particular ideology. Right. It's not enough to say
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: we're for America. We also have to say we're against
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: the people who attacked us. Right. So we've got to
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: figure out how we do both of those things where
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: we say clearly here's what we're opposing and here's why.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Here's what's wrong with it.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: And here's.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: What we're believing and here's why. And here's why these
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: two things are really incompatible, irreconcilable.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: I think hand in hand with that is understanding the,
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: the reason we have been vulnerable to these attacks.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And that's where, you know, your point not being woke
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: isn't enough because there are folks that see this and
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: they think this is nuts. We got to stand against this,
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: but we need to help them understand why this is wrong.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: And why the foundations that many who are on the
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: right side of the issue today are not sufficient. Because
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: they'll just be played again by the next thing that
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: comes if they don't go down to the root and understand,
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: wait a minute, wait a minute. It's like the inerrancy movement.
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, praise God for the inerrancy movement. But inerrancy
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: is not enough. It's not enough. And so we've got
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: to do this hard work of teaching again about law
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: and gospel. What does God actually say? What are the
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: rules for his world? you know, teaching true ecclesiology, what
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: are the rules for his house? What does it mean
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: when Jesus says that all authority in heaven and earth
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: has been given to me? What does his Lordship mean
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: for everything in life?
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: You know, as you have this, you have this, we
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: had this unity. We had this evangelical reformed unity, reformed
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: as unity. Um, that's, that's broken fault line.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: So when, when that happens, um, one could say, well,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: I used to be able to kind of trust these
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: guys and ride with these guys and now I can't.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: So now you have, now you have the Christians, the
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: good guys that are on the right side of the
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: fault line, not the unbelievers who happen to be against wokeness,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: but the actual Christians, the evangelical Christians, reformed evangelical Christians
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: that are here. Uh, the temptation could be, uh, who
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: now I can't trust anybody.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: I couldn't trust these guys.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: I can't trust these guys. I can't trust these guys.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: And you end up in like an Island.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Um, What do you see, Votie, as the danger that
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: could divide good guys again that are on the right
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: side of the fault line? Are there those things that
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: we need to guard against and.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Try to— And I think I see this in terms
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: of the school system. Right now, we've got people going
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: to school board meetings railing against critical race theory, right? Mm-hmm.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: And as we see this, there are a lot of
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: people who are like standing up and cheering. Like, yes,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: we need to fight this. I see that and I say,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, because critical pedagogy has been in our
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: school system for a long time, right? I mean, our
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: schools are anti-Christian by federal mandate. And so one of
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: the things that worries me is that people are going
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: to stand up against critical race theory, get critical race
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: theory out of schools that are anti-Christian by federal mandate,
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: that are still Marxist to the core and have been.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: for generations that were established by anti-Christians specifically for the
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: purpose of removing what they call religious superstition, right, from
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: our culture. And they're going to say, because we got
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: critical race theory out of there, now they're okay. Send
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: the school bus, right? And so I think the danger
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: is that we'll do the same thing, right? The danger
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: is that we'll say, and I'm telling people, because a
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: lot of people are wanting to talk to me about
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: critical race theory. This is not a book about critical
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: race theory. Critical race theory is one of the things
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: that I addressed, but I addressed a broader movement of
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: critical social justice, right? Which critical race theory is a
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: component of that. And I think a lot of people
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: are going to want to say, okay, we're going to
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: get this critical race theory thing out of here, but
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: then they're still going to have standpoint epistemology. They're still
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: going to have, you know, they're still going to have,
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: you know, all of these other you know, presuppositions and
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: other versions of critical theory that are still there because
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: we're not getting to the root of the matter. And
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: so over here, I would say it's great that you
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: don't want critical race theory to be part of education,
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: but what's your philosophy of education, right?
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: See, that maps on to, I said this at the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: conference up in Nashville, the Beat Resolve conference, that I'm
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: seeing this critical race theory, social justice stuff, as the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: mosaic administration of a pagan religion, right? But Moses comes
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: after Abraham, after the promises. So you walk back to
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the Adamic administration of paganism, 1960s. And this came from
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Sproul saying Aquarius, that's the age of Aquarius. And he says,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: we're at high noon now. Well, high noon's most, it's
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: a law. It's a law principle with a Davidic administration
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: of paganism being COVID where civil authorities begin to enforce
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: these pagan laws. But you've got to realize it's all
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the way back in the 60s, you know, and people
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: could argue previous, but where be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: have dominion. And John Lennon with his Abrahamic promises of
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: the world will live as one. And so when you
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: see that, yeah, you go, OK, there's people that are
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: on the not woke side of this thing. that might
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: have believed in the Abrahamic promises. You have people that
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: don't like the mosaic administration that may like the God
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: of the mosaic administration. And so I think it's a,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: it's an important time to say, Hey, we're not safe.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: If we get CRT out of the schools, we're not safe.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: If we just get the, get the teaching of these
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: bad ideas out of the seminaries, it's like, we need
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: to go way back to the root of the matter.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: And I, I think this is a moment for us
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: to try to help pastors and churches specifically to think
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: through these things. Because again, we didn't get here three
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: years ago. I mean, we just didn't wake up and
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: find ourselves here.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: This has been coming.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: This has been a part of a shifted worldview that's
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: happened for generations now. And the fact that, what is it,
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: like 80% of evangelicals still send their kids to public
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: education systems?
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Or more. I think it's more than that.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: More than that. Yeah.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: I mean, you're doing that and you think, oh, well,
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: I know teacher so-and-so. I know the principal. And that
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: may be great. And there may be some ways you
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: could navigate it. But this is a system that is designed.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because teacher so-and-so is not writing the curriculum.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: That's right. That's right. And there's all these federal laws.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: And I mean, so, yeah, the theory is that we
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: win the battle and say, OK, no more CRT in
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: our schools.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Let's send our kids to school now.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: And you're just perpetuating the problem. What is needed in
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: our churches and pastors, man, we bear this responsibility. We've
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: got to think carefully. We've got to read the Bible
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: again and see how it applies to every area of life,
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: including education and churches. We're doing it in our church,
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: starting Christian classical school in order to help parents to
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: think through these things, train parents to bring their children
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: up in the nurture and admission of the Lord and
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: recognize that everything in life is under the Lordship of Christ.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: Everything.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: And I think this is what we're seeing as a manifestation, um,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: of something that happened a long time ago. We decided
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: that we were gonna be man-centered, right? The church growth movement, right?
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: We decided that we were gonna be man-centered. We decided
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: that we were going to do church for an audience
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: of the lost. We decided that we were gonna do
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: church in such a way that made people like us,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: that we were gonna do church in such a way
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: that made people want to be around us, that made
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: people comfortable. And now we're looking out at a culture
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: that is saying to us, you know, we're uncomfortable, right?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: And the thing that would make us comfortable is a
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: CRT worldview approach to race and ethnicity. We're uncomfortable. And
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: the thing that would make us comfortable is, you know,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: an ideology that would be kinder and gentler toward same-sex
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: attraction and homosexuality. And the thing that would make us
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: comfortable would be, and what we're seeing is capitulation that
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: is based on an ideology that we accepted a long
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: time ago. And Jared, I'll go back to where you're
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: at right now. And you were talking about masks and shutdowns. Well,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: a while ago, we said, you don't have to gather
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: to have church. You can be way over there and
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: just watching on a screen.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: And those people who made that decision decades ago, it's
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: really easy once you've given up on the idea that
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: the ecclesia has to do with the gathering of a
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: people in a place. It's really easy to then capitulate
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: and say, you don't want us to meet?
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: No problem.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: We gave up on that being essential a long time ago.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: And so I think in both instances, we're seeing the
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: outgrowth and manifestation of ideologies that we accepted because we're
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: being man-centered and because we're being pragmatic.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It feels like somebody found the law. It had
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: been hidden for a long time, and nobody knew about it.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: And we're at that moment where we can't even give
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: a full answer to what we need to recover because
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: you're like the marketing thing, right? So we pick on
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the marketers, like the big dogs, like, you know, what's
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: his name, church, purpose-driven life guy, Rick Warren. You know,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: we pick on that. Well, that's totally the marketing. But
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: you start poking around, like even in the reformed and evangelical, stronger,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: you know, higher church, whatever, and you might realize... oh,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: there was some marketing impulses for us. We might not
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: have taken it all the way to where some of
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: these guys did, but we had that too. And we
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: were marketing, like even in our liturgy, in our worship,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: we're actually more concerned about people coming in off the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: street than we are about the God we're worshiping. And
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: now the people coming in off the street are wanting this,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and so we're working it over there to them.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm reminded what Paul says in 2 Corinthians
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: 11 about his fear for the Corinthian church. It says,
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: lest the way Satan deceived Eve, you be led astray
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: from the simplicity that is in Christ. I mean, the simplicity.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: We have a book. God has spoken. He tells us
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: what's real. Reality is what God says is real. Truth
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: is what God says is truth. Right, wrong is what
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: God says. about those things and to get back to
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: the simplicity of, okay, this really is God's world.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: This really is his show. He is working all this out.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: Calvin's analogy, I love that creation's a theater of his glory.
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: And so God has a purpose and he's working that
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: purpose out. He's given a scripture. He's told us how
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: to live in the church. He's given a scripture so
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: that we might know how to conduct ourselves in the
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: household of God, in our individual lives. He's created this
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: in his image and he's told us what it means
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: to To live in a way that honors him as
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: image bearers of God.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: And we can't assume anymore.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, the reformation that we need is across the
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: whole front. There's not any area that we say, oh, no, no,
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: we got this figured out. No, we got to go
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: back to the basics, the lordship of Christ, simplicity that's
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: in Christ, and begin to build from that.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: And it's going to be amazing to watch what God does,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: because a part of the thing that has to go
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: is like our hype, our crazy pragmatism, right? So even
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: as we sit here, I would love to know what's
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the exact playbook. And the answer is like, we don't know.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: But God is doing these amazing things. He's going to
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: be faithful. He's going to glorify himself. He's going to
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: do good to his church. He's going to spread his
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: kingdom over this wide earth. And it's great to be
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: at a moment where we're like, I don't know. It's
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: like Joab on the battlefield, surrounded on both sides. Hey,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: you go fight them. I'm going to go fight them.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: If you need help, I'll come. And if I need help,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: you come. And may the Lord do what seems good
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: to him. We're at that moment. So there are strategies,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: and there are dangers and temptations, and that's why we
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: talk about these things. But ultimately, there's no way to
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: manufacture the reformation that needs to happen. It does seem
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to me, though, I jump back here because it's funny.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: We're talking about it. And I remember we signaled a
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: number of doctrines. We said law, gospel, confessionalism, pastoral theology, creation,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the physical world, metaphysics, the advance of the kingdom of Christ,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: political theology and the spirit's work of new birth. Those
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: are the headings that we said, you know, if. If
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I could commission guys to do doctrinal work, like go
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: study Kuyper, dig into these areas. We need a whole
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: host of men that are going to do the theological
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: work because I think we need to recover a lot
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: of this. And I think Kuyper is a key in
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: my mind. Just go read Kuyper's stuff and see if
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: we can start to articulate these things for the modern era.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Then you're going to need the generals. What are the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: generals going to do? You need doctrinal work, and then
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: you need the right kind of generals. You need the
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: right kind of movements and organizations and conferences to Like
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: all that has to be a part of this. You
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: need faithfulness in churches. You need education of the next
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: generation that says we're totally cut off. You know, it's
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: like we need a lot of those things to happen.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: And those are at least some of the it's cool
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: because it's not going to be like one person is
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: going to be the savior for this thing. It's going
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: to be like the people of God using their gifts
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to begin to employ what needs to be done.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Buddy, what would you say to a pastor? Faithful.
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: Pastor, shepherd, he's getting his mind around what's going on.
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: He's thinking, man, what do I do? I'm 35 years old.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: What do I do? How do I lead God's people?
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: What counsel would you give to him?
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the first thing is this is not complicated, right?
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: As we often say.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: It's hard, but it's not complicated. The second thing is
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: that we have to go back to basics, right? We've
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: got to be like Vince Lombardi. This is football. And
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: we've got to rest assured that that's enough, that the
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Word of God is sufficient. The other thing is we
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: have to have confessional standards. And I think one of
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: the problems is we've run away from confessional standards for
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: so long. And instead, our standard has been you know,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: personality driven, right? But we have to have confessional standards.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: And then we have to do the basic work of
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: shepherding the flock, of leading and feeding. And the other
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: thing is, I would say, we have to fight to
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: become local again. Because I think one of the things
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: that happened is we sort of, you know, got atomized,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: you know, and the idea of the local was lost.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: The idea of, you know, I have a shepherd, I
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: have a man who's keeping watch over my soul. I
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: have brothers and sisters, you know, here around me, um,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: who matter to me and who love me and who
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: I love. And, and, um, you know, through thick and
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: through thin, I think we've lost that. And so I
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: think we need shepherds to gather flocks and to remind
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: them of that again. Um, because I, I agree that
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: all of these things, um, need to happen. But at
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: the end of the day, um, like all politics are
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: local at the end of the day, the church is local.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: Amen. Amen.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: We say it often and can't say it enough. Find
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: a healthy church, build your life around it and do
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: whatever you got to do to get to a place
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: where there is a healthy congregation and, uh, establish your
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: life there and raise your people, your family there and
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: live fruitfully there.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: And I think one of the things that we're seeing
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: right now is that we're being pulled away from the local. So,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: for example, on issues of race and ethnicity, it's not, hey,
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: you and another brother of another ethnicity or another sister
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: of another ethnicity. No, no, no, no, no. It is
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: bring that thing out to. the entire nation and the
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: entire history of the nation, bring that thing out to
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: groups of people and the outcomes of groups of people.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: And this is how you need to think about it.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: And this is how we need to solve it. We're, we're,
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: we're moving away from the local, we're moving away from
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: the individual and that's hugely problematic.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: Amen.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: And we, you know, I was speaking with a guy
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: who came from Scotland. I think he might even like
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Scottish covenant or, uh, tendencies. I don't know.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: He, But it was interesting.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: He moved to the States and he says, you know,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: in that wonderful Scottish accent, he's like, you know, the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: political idolatry here is remarkable to him. Like that everyone
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: is concerned with the federalism. Everyone's concerned with the nation.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: He's like, you could change things in your county in
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: like two months. And he's like, but everyone is like,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: it was interesting how, how gripping it was to him.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: I thought about that.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: It's so true.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: If you were to look at all these conservative Christians
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: at conservative churches that are so frustrated about what they
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: see on the news, it's always about what's going on
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in the nation, they probably don't even know their county commissioners.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Do they even know their county sheriff? And that's an indictment.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: We have to go and say, we need to pray
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: for these people and labor for these pockets where we're
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: going to see faithfulness. Amen.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Amen.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: Brody, thank you so much for being with us, brother.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: We praise God for your health and what he's doing.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: and look forward to the next chapter. In fact, if
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: you can hang around for a few minutes, we'd love
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: to maybe just take five minutes and ask you, what's
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: next for you?
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Can you do that? We'll do that for our supporters
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: in the Army.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to The Sword in the
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Shroud today.