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Voddie Baucham - Stand Firm Conference Q&A · Voddie Baucham Sermons

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  Speaker 1: Starting with Pastor Tom, in your first, in the opening address,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: you spoke about the definition of substitution, particularly distinguishing that
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a true doctrine of substitution is not merely the condemning
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: of Christ in the flesh. Would you be able to
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: elaborate a bit more on what that is and how
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: we can think rightly about the doctrine of substitution?
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: I started thinking of something else. Say the last half
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: of the question again. Okay.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: How we can clarify the true... Definition of substitution, not
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: as merely condemning Christ in the flesh.
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  Speaker 3: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: Well, let me reword it the way I meant it,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: regardless of what I said. What I meant was there
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: are some who will say, so this is like one N.T.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Wright who will come out just in flaming opposition to PSA,
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  Speaker 2: Penal Substitutionary Atonement, one of the great, the central definition
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: of the gospel and the atonement. You know, we have
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: other facets of it. There's Christus Victor, that.
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  Speaker 4: He's a victory.
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  Speaker 2: He's victorious in atonement. There's redemption. There's reconciliation. There's different
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  Speaker 2: ways that the scripture points out this multifaceted reality of atonement.
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  Speaker 2: But at the heart of the gospel, as J.I. Packer said,
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  Speaker 2: there's propitiation. That Jesus takes our penalty, so it's penal.
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  Speaker 2: He takes our place, so it's substitution. And it affects
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  Speaker 2: an atonement, so PSA. So guys like N.T. Wright will
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  Speaker 2: come out in opposition to it. Oh, it sounds like
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  Speaker 2: child abuse. Oh, the Western church has just made all
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  Speaker 2: of this stuff about a furious father who smites his
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: son under his foot. Now he's happy again. That's not
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  Speaker 2: the gospel. And then after some pushback or opposition, he'll
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  Speaker 2: then come back out because he's meant to be an Anglican.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: comes back out and goes oh you thought i was
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: against penal substitutionary atonement well you know you must have
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  Speaker 2: heard me wrong let me say in the clearest terms
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  Speaker 2: i affirm it because in the cross god condemned sin
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  Speaker 2: in the flesh and everyone goes rupturous like see we
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  Speaker 2: told you he's not a flaming heretic we told you
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  Speaker 2: he's he's not one of those weird anglicans it's fine
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  Speaker 2: and so it goes um All the Australian apologists for N.T.
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  Speaker 2: Wright get back up into their lecterns and defend him.
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  Speaker 2: But what he's done is actually, it was just sleight
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  Speaker 2: of hand and it was equivocation. Because you can deny
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  Speaker 2: penal substitution that Jesus became our legal representative, was personally
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  Speaker 2: condemned in my place and for my sins, and still
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  Speaker 2: say the phrase, God condemns sin in the flesh. Because
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  Speaker 2: what is different is that God did not just condemn
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  Speaker 2: sin as an impersonal entity in the bodily components of
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  Speaker 2: the incarnate man. God condemned a person in place of people.
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  Speaker 2: That's what's so important about the language of representation and substitution,
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  Speaker 2: is that it was not just the flesh of Jesus
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  Speaker 2: in our place. It was not just something corporal or material.
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  Speaker 2: It was personal representation. Sin is always personal. There's not
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  Speaker 2: just sin that can be distinguished from persons. Sin is
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  Speaker 2: committed by people. Therefore, it's not just sin itself that
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  Speaker 2: was being punished. It was personal guilt. And therefore, God
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  Speaker 2: condemned me in Jesus. And God condemned Jesus. It was
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  Speaker 2: the will of the Lord to crush him. And so
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  Speaker 2: we have to say, you really weed out the people
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  Speaker 2: who in word only affirm penal substitutionary atonement, or those
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  Speaker 2: who really inherit the legacy of the Reformation and the
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  Speaker 2: truth of Pauline texts in the scripture, which affirm that
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  Speaker 2: it was Jesus who suffered under the hatred and curse
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  Speaker 2: of God, all the while being unified as the eternal son,
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  Speaker 2: no doubt. But yeah, it was a personal condemnation. In
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  Speaker 2: that sense, we need to define and defend penal substitutions.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps a question specifically for you, Dr.
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  Speaker 3: Borkum.
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  Speaker 1: Someone's asked what you have particularly learned in your ministry
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  Speaker 1: and experience over the past while.
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  Speaker 3: In your work in Zambia.
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  Speaker 1: Would you be able to elaborate on that?
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  Speaker 3: Can you ask me something maybe a little bit more broad?
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  Speaker 4: How was Zambia?
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  Speaker 3: Oh, boy.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: I learned a great deal, and I learned a great
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  Speaker 5: deal about myself.
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  Speaker 3: I learned a great deal about those places where.
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  Speaker 5: Our culture meets our theology and how important it is
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  Speaker 5: for us to recognize the distinction between the things that
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  Speaker 5: we hold to and believe and cherish.
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  Speaker 3: That are part of our culture, right?
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  Speaker 5: Versus the things that we hold to and believe and
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  Speaker 5: cherish that are part of our theology because one of
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  Speaker 5: those we can never give up or change and the
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  Speaker 5: other we need to be willing to. And that was
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  Speaker 5: something that because that's something that we really don't see
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  Speaker 5: until we get away, right? It's kind of like Aristotle's question,
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  Speaker 5: does a fish know that he's wet, right? The answer
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  Speaker 5: is get him out.
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  Speaker 3: Of the water and And he'll know something's wrong, right?
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  Speaker 5: And when we get out of our surroundings, that happens
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  Speaker 5: to us as well. So I think for me, that
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  Speaker 5: was a big part of the whole experience.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: Here's one in general. If God hates the sinner as
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  Speaker 1: much as the sin, what does.
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  Speaker 3: It mean by?
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  Speaker 1: Since. There we go. What does it mean then by,
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  Speaker 1: in John 3.16, for God so loved the world that?
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  Speaker 2: I've never read that verse before. I take back everything
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  Speaker 2: I previously said. John 3.16, you say? Yeah, that is
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  Speaker 2: what makes John 3.16 such an astoundingly glorious and wonderful
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  Speaker 2: proclamation for Jesus to make. God has so loved the world, so... Well,
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  Speaker 2: what is the world in John? The world in John's
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  Speaker 2: gospel is the whole corporation of the human race that
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  Speaker 2: despises God, that breaks his law, that butchered his son
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  Speaker 2: when he came in the flesh, that is an enemy
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  Speaker 2: by nature, that is a child of wrath, that is
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  Speaker 2: needing to be born again. All these things that the
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  Speaker 2: sons of the devil, like pick one of the phrases
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  Speaker 2: that Jesus uses in the gospel of John to describe
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  Speaker 2: the world. That's why it's so astounding. That's why it's
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  Speaker 2: the great declaration of God's love for him to say,
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  Speaker 2: but God so loved the world that he gave. So again,
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  Speaker 2: this goes back to somebody like, for example, C.H. Dodd,
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  Speaker 2: who was an English theologian, and he made the claim,
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  Speaker 2: ridiculous claim, but he made the claim that in Romans,
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  Speaker 2: the wrath of God is always impersonal. So the consequences
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  Speaker 2: of sin in the world, kind of like karmic retribution,
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  Speaker 2: the love of God is personal. And in fact, since
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  Speaker 2: we see the love of God already over the world
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  Speaker 2: to send the son, then he couldn't have had wrath
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  Speaker 2: because then he wouldn't have sent the son. Um, He sees.
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  Speaker 2: It's just all back to front. The wrath of God,
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  Speaker 2: first of all, is personal all over the book of
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  Speaker 2: Romans just as much as the love of God. It's
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  Speaker 2: the wrath of God, not just the consequences in the
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  Speaker 2: world that we choose to call wrath.
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  Speaker 4: C.H.
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  Speaker 2: Dodd tried to say, if God loved us, he couldn't
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  Speaker 2: have been wrathful over us. But it is just precisely
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  Speaker 2: the love of God. God is more, you know, we
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  Speaker 2: speak that way. God couldn't have loved and had such
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  Speaker 2: hatred at the same time. Yes, he could, because he's
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  Speaker 2: not us. You and I are overwhelmed by certain emotions.
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  Speaker 2: We call them passions. I either feel enraged with love
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  Speaker 2: for you or enraged with fury for you. I'm not
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  Speaker 2: usually going to have the same. But in God, love
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  Speaker 2: is not an emotion. God does not have passions that
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  Speaker 2: are drawn out of him because he saw something in you.
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  Speaker 2: So he doesn't love you because he sees something. Or
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  Speaker 2: does he hate you because he sees something in you?
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  Speaker 2: God hates you because you are in opposition to his
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  Speaker 2: very nature and every personal characteristic we can speak of him.
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  Speaker 2: He also loves you because of his eternal nature and
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  Speaker 2: his decree and his promise to his son that he
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  Speaker 2: would redeem you.
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  Speaker 3: So God.
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  Speaker 2: Therefore, we can say, at the same time, God loved
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  Speaker 2: and hated sinners in different senses. That's not a contradiction
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  Speaker 2: at all. It's in different senses. God loved the world,
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  Speaker 2: even those that He would one day judge. He does still,
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  Speaker 2: in benevolent love and common grace, give great blessings to.
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  Speaker 2: God so loved the world that he hated the sin
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  Speaker 2: and the sinners in that he gave his one and
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  Speaker 2: only son so that they could receive his love by
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  Speaker 2: believing upon him instead of perishing forever, which would be
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  Speaker 2: the reception of his hatred, justly so. So they are
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  Speaker 2: not contradictory at all.
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  Speaker 1: Here's one generally on the mission of Christ and the church.
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  Speaker 1: How does thinking about the mission of Christ for the
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  Speaker 1: church connect with the dominion mandate? from Genesis 1?
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  Speaker 3: For anyone.
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  Speaker 5: I think you find that nicely put in the Great Commission, right?
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  Speaker 5: What are we called to do? We're called to go
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  Speaker 5: and we're called to proclaim the gospel and we're called
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  Speaker 5: to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son,
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  Speaker 5: and Holy Spirit. and to teach them to observe all
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  Speaker 5: that he has taught us. I think that that's the
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  Speaker 5: New Testament version, if you will, of that cultural mandate.
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  Speaker 5: That mandate hasn't gone anywhere. And the reason that that
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  Speaker 5: mandate hasn't gone anywhere is because Christ.
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  Speaker 3: Is enthroned on high. He is Lord.
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  Speaker 5: Not just over the souls of men to keep them
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  Speaker 5: out of hell, but over the totality of those men
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  Speaker 5: so that in their life as husbands and fathers and
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  Speaker 5: mothers and wives, and children, and parents, and workers, and
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  Speaker 5: everything else, that the glory of Christ shines through in
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  Speaker 5: all of that as we live in light of this
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  Speaker 5: gospel that has transformed us.
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  Speaker 2: One of the ways I've heard it said is that
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  Speaker 2: grace doesn't destroy nature. So the Great Commission doesn't come
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  Speaker 2: in and entirely replace and remove the need to populate,
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  Speaker 2: get married, be in one flesh, have babies, work hard
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  Speaker 2: and exercise dominion over the world. It rather makes that
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  Speaker 2: now possible because the new Adam didn't fail but he's
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  Speaker 2: on the throne. It makes it possible because now you
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  Speaker 2: have the Holy Spirit and it makes it more God-glorifying
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  Speaker 2: because it's being done under the Lordship of Christ. So
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  Speaker 2: there's nothing in the Great Commission that ruins the original
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  Speaker 2: dominion mandate or that removes it. Absolutely not. But that
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  Speaker 2: gives a grace and glory empowerment to everything and a
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  Speaker 2: very particular charge and direction. All of your dominion mandate
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  Speaker 2: should be building the local church.
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  Speaker 1: On the question of the church being the manifold wisdom
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  Speaker 1: of God, or the reality of that rather. There's a
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  Speaker 1: question on the significance of our role then in the church,
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  Speaker 1: participating in that. What's the significance of membership in a
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  Speaker 1: local church for a believer?
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  Speaker 6: I had determined, Nathaniel, that I would sit here and
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  Speaker 6: answer nothing. And I was doing pretty well. Just before
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  Speaker 6: we got up, I leaned over to Tom and said,
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  Speaker 6: you and Bertie would do great at this Q & A.
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  Speaker 4: I don't need to be up there. And you purposely
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  Speaker 4: tailored a question for me.
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  Speaker 3: Rude.
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  Speaker 4: I forget the question.
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  Speaker 3: What was it?
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  Speaker 4: Next question.
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  Speaker 3: Membership.
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  Speaker 6: I believe in membership because I believe the New Testament mandate,
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  Speaker 6: using that word again, but in a different kind of
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  Speaker 6: semantic range. I believe the New Testament mandate for elders
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  Speaker 6: and leaders and pastors is to have a true sense
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  Speaker 6: of who exactly you're accountable for. So when Peter says,
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  Speaker 6: I exhort the elders among you to shepherd the church
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  Speaker 6: of God, when Paul says that to the Ephesian elders
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  Speaker 6: in Acts 20, there's a definitive collection of who they are. Now,
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  Speaker 6: the New Testament scenario is very different to the scenario today.
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  Speaker 6: We pastors, we talk about this a lot, that if
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  Speaker 6: I've got a real church discipline issue, and I really
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  Speaker 6: have to deal with something in a very, what is
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  Speaker 6: actually outwardly an ugly way, but it's a redemptive way,
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  Speaker 6: sort of that, you know, hand them over to Satan, excommunicate. Thankfully,
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  Speaker 6: I've had to do that a few times in ministry,
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  Speaker 6: but I have had to do it.
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  Speaker 4: They just drive down the road, right?
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  Speaker 6: In the first century, if you got ousted from the
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  Speaker 6: Corinthian church, it was a four-day walk to Ephesus. You
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  Speaker 6: knew you were out. You being ousted had real teeth
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  Speaker 6: to it. It had testosterone to it. It had starch
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  Speaker 6: to it. Today, church discipline has kind of lost a
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  Speaker 6: little bit of that because Just the fact that churches
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  Speaker 6: seem to proliferate, they tend to split, all sorts of things.
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  Speaker 4: But I think what we must do is exalt the
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  Speaker 4: importance of membership.
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  Speaker 6: Covenantal membership is key to a healthy church because those
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  Speaker 6: elders and leaders are told that they will give an
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  Speaker 6: account for how they shepherded the flock among them. So
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  Speaker 6: you've got to have a way of knowing who they are.
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  Speaker 6: Membership is a way to sort of identify that. But
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  Speaker 6: it also helps those people that are coming to your
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  Speaker 6: church get a sense of what it means to dig
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  Speaker 6: down roots, be accountable to their eldership, to hear the
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  Speaker 6: exposit word of God, to enjoy the celebration of the sacrament,
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  Speaker 6: and to be liable to church discipline if you live
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  Speaker 6: in flagrant unrepentance. The church discipline is so key to
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  Speaker 6: New Testament ecclesiology.
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  Speaker 4: And I would say if you're sitting here.
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  Speaker 6: Today, you've been going to a church, you like it,
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  Speaker 6: obviously you keep going, you like it, Get on board.
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  Speaker 4: Sign on.
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  Speaker 6: Go to your elders and say, I'm submitted to you.
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  Speaker 6: What you see in my life, I want you to correct, rebuke, exhort, challenge.
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  Speaker 6: I love the preaching of the word. I want to
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  Speaker 6: join in.
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  Speaker 4: I'm part of the mission here.
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  Speaker 6: What does that look like? Maybe there's a covenant to sign.
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  Speaker 6: Maybe there's a membership vote to be had. Whatever your
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  Speaker 6: church does that, however it happens, buy in. That's what
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  Speaker 6: church membership is about.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you. If the vision of the church that you
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  Speaker 1: attend alters radically from the points and the stances that
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  Speaker 1: have been discussed today, is that a.
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  Speaker 3: Church that you would advise leaving? Every Q & A.
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  Speaker 4: This question.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Every Q & A.
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  Speaker 3: That's just true.
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  Speaker 5: And what he was saying is every Q & A,
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  Speaker 5: this question comes up, every Q & A.
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  Speaker 3: And I want to answer it this way.
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  Speaker 5: Most times that question is coming up in the context
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  Speaker 5: of people who have this idealized, online version of what
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  Speaker 5: the church is supposed to be. So they go online
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  Speaker 5: and they have people that they listen to and people
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  Speaker 5: that they have an affinity for and they only see
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  Speaker 5: the best of those people and they assume the best
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  Speaker 5: of those churches and they fantasize about what it would
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: be like to be at those people's churches and then
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  Speaker 5: they can't stand their own church.
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  Speaker 3: Because it doesn't live up to that fantasy.
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  Speaker 5: And so they find two or three things that the
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  Speaker 5: guys that they listen to online would say.
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  Speaker 3: Guys who often don't even agree with one another, right?
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  Speaker 5: And then they come to their church, and their church
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  Speaker 5: disagrees on those few things. And then this question comes.
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  Speaker 5: Should I leave, right? Or it's because I have a
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  Speaker 5: list of 15 things that I want from a church,
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: and this church only has 12. You know, more often
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: than not, the question is coming from there. And I
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  Speaker 5: want to say to that, the problem is not with
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  Speaker 5: the church. The problem is with you.
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  Speaker 3: Usually.
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  Speaker 5: There are instances where churches are wrong and reprobate and
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  Speaker 5: unbiblical and you should leave.
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  Speaker 3: But usually, in that instance, you don't have to ask
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  Speaker 3: that question. You follow? You follow?
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  Speaker 5: Usually if you're at that church, you're not coming to
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  Speaker 5: the conference going, I wonder. No, usually at that church,
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  Speaker 5: you've got book, chapter, and verse. These people are wrong
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  Speaker 5: and unbiblical. Usually that question is coming from petty stuff.
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  Speaker 5: And I want to say, if you start running for
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  Speaker 5: petty stuff, you'll never stop running.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you. On the back of that, we will be
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  Speaker 2: starting Stand Firm Church in Melbourne for all of you
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: petty people to find the most perfect congregation.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Craig, another question for you. You can't escape. You spoke
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: in your first talk about, from that Spurgeon anecdote, the
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  Speaker 1: key ingredient of expectancy in evangelism.
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  Speaker 4: I never said the key ingredient.
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  Speaker 3: Forgive me.
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  Speaker 4: The key ingredient is the gospel. A key component of
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  Speaker 4: that is expectancy, just to be clear.
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  Speaker 3: A key component of successful.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's not like I can win souls by just
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  Speaker 6: expectancy because that's.
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  Speaker 4: All that matters. I walked out there.
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  Speaker 6: I used to be a youth pastor, so I know
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  Speaker 6: what purgatory is like.
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  Speaker 4: I had this one young guy that.
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  Speaker 6: Was just fixated on this idea of that because the
• 18:08
  Speaker 6: Bible said, they that confess that Jesus is Lord shall
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  Speaker 6: be saved, he just had to trick people in a
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  Speaker 6: conversation into saying it. And then they were stuck, right?
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  Speaker 6: And I couldn't change this guy's mind. So that's why
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  Speaker 6: I'm interrupting and clarifying. Expectancy isn't the gospel. The gospel
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  Speaker 6: is an articulated explicit message. Expectancy is what you bring,
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  Speaker 6: that optimism.
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  Speaker 4: Did I cut you off? Did you finish the question?
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  Speaker 1: That cuts to the essence of the question. Why is
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  Speaker 1: it that expectancy is lacking... as a key in the
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  Speaker 1: church and what can be done to increase that expectancy.
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  Speaker 4: Well, I think faith is key.
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  Speaker 6: So I think for guys, look at our Reformed heritage,
• 18:50
  Speaker 6: the John Bunyans, the George Whitfields, even the Calvins and
• 18:53
  Speaker 6: the Luthers and certainly the Spurgeons and the Judsons, right?
• 18:56
  Speaker 6: Names that you would have heard spoke about today, along
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: with Ed Woodses and other characters like that. It would
• 19:01
  Speaker 6: have been quite a strange question for them to have
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: posed to them why do we lack the expectancy? They
• 19:08
  Speaker 6: would have felt like believing in the power of the
• 19:11
  Speaker 6: gospel intrinsically as God's power unto salvation.
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: I want to make this clear.
• 19:16
  Speaker 6: Again, we're not saying the gospel is some mechanized production line, right?
• 19:19
  Speaker 6: It's not like just get the code words right. It's
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: a talisman, it's a spell, and then bam, before they
• 19:24
  Speaker 6: know it.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: They're saved, right? But it's God's vehicle. It's God's mode.
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: It is the power of God unto salvation.
• 19:31
  Speaker 6: That's an incredibly important Now Spurgeon believes, Spurgeon loved the phrase,
• 19:35
  Speaker 6: the instrumentality of the communicator.
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: He loved that phrase, the instrumentality. We are an instrument
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: in God's hands. That's what we are.
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: And Spurgeon loved when Murray McShane used to say, he
• 19:46
  Speaker 6: used to say, a holy minister is a fearful weapon
• 19:49
  Speaker 6: in the hands of God. So as we cultivate sanctification
• 19:52
  Speaker 6: and Christ-likeness, naturally, one would, I think, rightly assume that
• 19:57
  Speaker 6: that then begins to develop in a true expectation. So
• 20:00
  Speaker 6: those that here, I've seen a number of our students
• 20:02
  Speaker 6: at the Haddon Institute, just a bit of a plug there, Tom,
• 20:05
  Speaker 6: the Haddon Institute, check us out online. they will know
• 20:08
  Speaker 6: that when I talk about evangelism and mission, I impose
• 20:11
  Speaker 6: this definition that I've argued for many years now. Evangelism
• 20:15
  Speaker 6: is explicit gospel proclamation. I'm tempted to pick on one
• 20:19
  Speaker 6: of my students, see if they know it. Explicit gospel proclamation, right,
• 20:24
  Speaker 6: that anticipates a positive response. The reason why I isolate that,
• 20:28
  Speaker 6: normally it's the second clause that people take exception with,
• 20:31
  Speaker 6: especially the reforms to their back teeth, right? Like, because
• 20:35
  Speaker 6: you guys, I challenge you, if you're here for the
• 20:37
  Speaker 6: rest of the day in Melbourne, a lot of you
• 20:38
  Speaker 6: guys live here, you'll go out to the street and
• 20:40
  Speaker 6: find street preachers that preach so they don't expect it
• 20:42
  Speaker 6: to yield a positive response. And you can find them
• 20:45
  Speaker 6: on YouTube, right? They expect to be out there, to
• 20:47
  Speaker 6: be heckled, to be challenged, to be thrown rotten fruit at,
• 20:50
  Speaker 6: to be... They think the gospel is there to be
• 20:52
  Speaker 6: an antagonism. And that's so far-fetched from our Reformed heritage
• 20:57
  Speaker 6: of the names that I've already mentioned to you, the
• 20:59
  Speaker 6: Judsons and the Edwards and the Spurgeons and the Bunyans.
• 21:02
  Speaker 6: But I say it's also quite distinct from... the ministry
• 21:05
  Speaker 6: of Jesus and his apostles. Now, it doesn't mean the
• 21:08
  Speaker 6: gospel all... I didn't say the gospel always yields a
• 21:11
  Speaker 6: positive response. Like, we know the Puritans used to be
• 21:14
  Speaker 6: fond of saying, the same heat from the sun hardens
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: the clay and melts the wax. It all comes down
• 21:18
  Speaker 6: to the eternal foreknowledge of God. Of course, God's sovereignty
• 21:22
  Speaker 6: in election is always going to stand true and stand firm. However,
• 21:26
  Speaker 6: I want it to be made clear that when we
• 21:27
  Speaker 6: proclaim the gospel, we should proclaim it as though it
• 21:29
  Speaker 6: is good news. And it's very identifiable, usually in the subject.
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: Of the person you're dealing with.
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: You go out there after lunch, you share the gospel
• 21:36
  Speaker 6: with someone on the tram or someone on the bus
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: or just someone at work on Monday. If you're saying it, though,
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: you expect them to not believe it, agree with it
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: or buy into it. Spurgeon says, according to your faith,
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: be it unto you. You should anticipate. The gospel is
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: good news.
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: You should proclaim.
• 21:53
  Speaker 6: I always use, it's a silly example, but I use
• 21:54
  Speaker 6: the example, let's say through some concatenation.
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: Of a miracle, Elon Musk turned up at this conference today, right?
• 22:00
  Speaker 6: And he said, I'm giving all of you right now,
• 22:02
  Speaker 6: I'm giving all of you $ 2 million. The condition is
• 22:05
  Speaker 6: you can have it if you go out there and
• 22:07
  Speaker 6: give $ 1 million away. I don't think you'd run outside
• 22:10
  Speaker 6: and give that million away to some random with the
• 22:14
  Speaker 6: same negative tone and connotation that a lot of preachers do.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: It's good news.
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: It's the lottery ticket of all lottery tickets. It's the
• 22:22
  Speaker 6: fact that I am totally depraved, sunken in sin.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: I'm unsavable. I'm irredeemable.
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: I'm an enemy of God, born into wrath, dead in
• 22:29
  Speaker 6: trespasses and sins, and God sent Jesus to save me.
• 22:34
  Speaker 6: And that message is transferable and conveyable. Explicit gospel proclamation,
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: that's the key to evangelism and mission. Explicit gospel. Don't
• 22:41
  Speaker 6: tell me your evangelism is mowing your neighbor's lawn and
• 22:43
  Speaker 6: one day they'll ask you about Jesus.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: Only when they ask you, when you explicitly tell them,
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: is it actually evangelism?
• 22:50
  Speaker 6: It's explicit gospel proclamation, anticipates a positive response. With your faith,
• 22:55
  Speaker 6: your expectancy, your anticipation, buy into this reformed idea that
• 23:00
  Speaker 6: we believe more than any other Christian tradition, the gospel
• 23:03
  Speaker 6: bears fruit. It may take 85 years. It may take generations.
• 23:08
  Speaker 6: It has to bear the fruit of God's glorious purposes.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: There's a question in terms of distinguishing between useful and unuseful,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: or helpful and unhelpful approaches to parachurch ministry?
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: There you go.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: What are some ways that we can define that and
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: think accurately about that?
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the key there is church, right? There
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: are a lot of parachurch ministries that are all para
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: and no church. Right? They exist outside of the church.
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: They have a ministry that doesn't help and often competes
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: with the church. As opposed to understanding that God's plan
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: is the church and that whatever else that we're doing,
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: it has to be part of upholding and magnifying and
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: strengthening the church. not being an alternative to it. And
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: I think that whatever our ministries are, they have to
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: be that. One of the reasons that we decided to
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: take our family and move across the water to Zambia
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: was because the African Christian University was started by the
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: Reformed Baptist Church Association of Zambia. It wasn't just this,
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: you know, prayer church work off doing something.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: It was this, you know, decades old.
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: Fruitful, healthy Reformed Baptist movement that was coming together to
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: launch this university. and needed help to do that. So
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: that was one of the things that made it an
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: attractive option. If there was no church component to that,
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: it wouldn't have been an attractive option. So I think
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: it's that second part of the phrase, the church part
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: of the phrase.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Here's one which has clearly come from an alternate denomination.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Is there a contradiction between, well, isn't there a contradiction
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: between reformed and Baptist. Are those two words incompatible?
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: The Presbyterians got to the wires. We have letters. When
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: they come together, they usually form words. When words are
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: put together, they can form phrases and clauses. When those
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: are put together, they become sentences. And when they're put together,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: it's paragraphs. When paragraphs are put together, it's a paragraph.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: a work, and if you have multiple chapters, it's called
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: a book. In what we call history is the passing
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: of time, and in that history, there's been a lot
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: of these books produced, and a lot of them entailed
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: both theological treatises and also accounts of history. So what
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: this reader could do is find a book and read,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: read a little bit of history, a little bit of theology,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: and then they won't ask questions like that. But just
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: start real simple. Reformed Baptists are, hasn't it been said,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: the true inheritors of the Reformation.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: Hoorah!
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we kept reforming.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: We just finished.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: We still don't have a man-made body of leaders over
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: the top of us telling the local church what to do.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: And we don't keep on sprinkling and pouring when the
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: apostles taught us to dunk the believers.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: But they're our brothers. Yeah, absolutely. We forgive them. One
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: of the things, I mean, historically, Baptists are the radical reformers, right? Yeah.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: The other thing is, in the Second London.
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: Baptist Confession, by the way, the First London Baptist Confession, 1644.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: Westminster is after that in 1646. Okay?
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: Second London Baptist Confession comes 1677.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: Ratified 1689. And it's formatted along with Westminster. The reason
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: that it's formatted that way.
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: Is so that it could be clear that we're confessing
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: the same reformed faith. But it also makes it clear
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: where there's divergence. And so, no, there's absolutely no contradiction whatsoever.
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: and I think if you read.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: Westminster and you read 2nd London, it makes that very,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: very clear.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: One of the confusions is people think that the Reformed
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Baptists came out of the Anabaptist movements from Germany and
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: the Continental Reformation. They were not Reformed. They wouldn't want
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: to be called Reformed. They were mostly Kiliastic, like thousand-year
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: reign just about to come. They were not Reformed. did
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: not believe in election, they were not ad fondus, back
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: to the sources, sola scriptura, like the Reformed Baptists. The
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: Reformed Baptists came out of England after the Anglican church
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: sort of spat out the Puritans. The Puritans were congregational
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: and Presbyterian. The Congregationalists sort of were those, they kind
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: of moved further than the Presbyterians. They were actually, no, actually,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: it should only be local churches that have congregational rule,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: not presbyteries, right, for the Presbyterians. That was a church
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: government thing. Then out of them came those who would go, well,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: hang on, not only are we reformed, not only is
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: the local church independent, but also... The very definition and
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: necessity of the church are those believers who ought to
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: receive the ordinance of baptism upon their faith. So that's
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: who the Reformed Baptists are. They're coming out of the
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: stream of the Reformed English tradition, not the Anabaptist crazies
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: on the continent.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: What?
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I think that is us out of time
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: for Q & A, unfortunately, but thank you very much
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: to the three of you.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: Could we have a round of applause to them?
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: Very good.