The NXR Podcast - BONUS - Matt Chandler And The Danger Of Unbiblical Forms Of Church Discipline

00:00:00 Big news. Really big news. Our next Right Response Conference is in the works. We've got a number of

00:00:07 things already lined up and organized. This is what we've got so far. The whole conference,

00:00:12 three days long on post-millennialism and theonomy. And the speakers, Dr. James White,

00:00:20 Dr. Joseph Boot, Gary DeMar, and of course, yours truly, Pastor Joel Webin. We've got a great lineup.

00:00:27 We've got great topics.

00:00:29 If you want to find out dates and location and registration and anything else, go and

00:00:34 visit our website, rightresponseconference.com, rightresponseconference.com.

00:00:41 All right, first things first, before we get to old Matt Chandler, let's deal with the

00:00:47 real star of the show.

00:00:48 This is Franklin.

00:00:49 He's hungry, so I'm going to give him right to mama, but this is Franklin Joel Webin.

00:00:54 Say hi, Franklin Joel Webin.

00:00:56 There's a little bit of family resemblance, and he's not very happy.

00:01:01 Okay, I love you.

00:01:02 I love you, Bubba.

00:01:03 Bye-bye.

00:01:04 Bye-bye.

00:01:05 All right, we'll go ahead and dive in.

00:01:07 Welcome, guys.

00:01:08 So this Monday, as you know, is Labor Day, so we're going to take Monday off, and we

00:01:13 took this last Monday off because I was dealing with that little guy, which was great.

00:01:16 He was born on Sunday.

00:01:19 I don't know.

00:01:20 It's just, it's like God cares about the Lord's Day and the preaching of His Word or something

00:01:24 because I was able to go to church that morning and preach, I thought, one of my best sermons,

00:01:29 although my opinion, I'm sure, is biased. But I was able to preach God's word faithfully in our

00:01:33 series through the book of Hebrews. And then we went home. We were able to feed our girls. We

00:01:37 have three girls, Olive and Ruth and Eleanor, and put them down for a nap. And then within about

00:01:44 half an hour, my wife, Megan, was like, it's go time. And so we called the grandparents. They

00:01:49 came over, rushed to the house to watch the girls while they were sleeping. So that was a smooth

00:01:53 transition. They were all laid down. They knew that we might go at any moment, taking their nap.

00:01:58 Grandma and grandpa came over. We hopped in the car. We went to the hospital. And it was great.

00:02:04 It was successful. You just saw the proof, the fruit of that success. So we've got Franklin.

00:02:10 He was born, I think, at, I believe it was 9.19 p.m. 9.19 p.m. We got to the hospital probably

00:02:17 about 3.30. So it wasn't too long, a little less than six hours from checking in to holding

00:02:25 Franklin. And Megan has been recovering fantastically. She always does. I don't even

00:02:30 like talking about her pregnancies or her deliveries. I will not talk about her deliveries

00:02:35 with other women watching the show because I would be tempting you to sin, particularly in

00:02:41 the sin of envy. I'll just say, God has been so gracious to my wife. I have no doubt that it's

00:02:47 still not a cakewalk. It's not a picnic. But from what we hear from other women, God has been

00:02:53 exceedingly gracious towards my wife, Megan, with her pregnancies and her deliveries. And so now

00:03:00 the goal is just getting him to eat. One of the things that we struggle with with our webbing

00:03:04 babies is they tend to lose about 10%. Every baby loses, you know, from their birth weight,

00:03:11 to a few days later, but 10% is starting to get to the concerning zone. And all of our kids have

00:03:17 gotten about to 10% weight loss. And so it's trying to get them to eat. But so far it looks,

00:03:25 he did hit that 10%, I think like 10, 10.5% from his birth weight, which was eight pounds,

00:03:32 five ounces. He got all the way down to, I believe seven pounds, seven and a half ounces.

00:03:39 So from 8.5 to 7, 7.5, so almost a full pound.

00:03:45 And so that's not great, but since then he has been eating.

00:03:49 We've got a scale at home, and I think we just weighed him a few hours ago, and our

00:03:54 scale said 7.11.

00:03:56 So from 7.7 to 7.11, that's the right direction.

00:04:00 So keep us in your prayers, but know that everything in the Webbin household is good.

00:04:04 If it wasn't, I wouldn't be here because I love you.

00:04:08 but I love my family more and God requires me to love them more. But luckily things are going well.

00:04:14 The girls, we just put them down for bed. Franklin is about to do some dinner, late night dinner with

00:04:19 mama and things are going well. I even cleaned up the whole house today and I even weeded our

00:04:25 garden. So I'm using the time to try to keep things in order to make things good for the kids

00:04:31 and especially good for mom. So thank you for praying. Keep praying. Really the only prayer

00:04:36 is just that Franklin would gain weight.

00:04:37 And the other prayer for Right Response Ministries,

00:04:40 not so much the Webb and Household,

00:04:41 but our ministry is that Franklin,

00:04:44 part of the reason I brought him in here

00:04:45 was to show him to you guys,

00:04:46 but also to give him a taste of his bedroom.

00:04:49 Because a lot of people don't know this,

00:04:50 but this is Franklin's bedroom.

00:04:52 This is a room in my house.

00:04:54 And it was great having the studio in our home.

00:04:57 It was, you know, economic and affordable

00:05:00 and all those kinds of things.

00:05:01 But the thing is that my wife and I,

00:05:04 we keep producing arrows in our quiver. We keep having babies because we love babies. We love

00:05:11 God's word. We want to have several children because children are not a burden. They're a

00:05:16 blessing. But the problem is we only have so much space in our house. So pray for Franklin to put

00:05:21 on weight. That's a webbing prayer. But right response ministry's prayer would be pray that

00:05:25 the Lord would continue to provide. He's been gracious through your generosity. The Lord has

00:05:31 been faithful, but pray that the Lord would continue to bring in donations and funds so

00:05:36 that we can get the studio out of our house. We want to get it out of the webbing house,

00:05:41 but we also want to actually revamp and have a more professional studio. Right now, I would say

00:05:47 it's semi-professional. We've got some good cameras and okay lighting, but we want to get

00:05:52 more professional lighting. We could up our game with the lighting. We think we could just gear

00:05:57 of the room and more sound padding, things like that to get better quality sound for you guys in

00:06:02 these videos, better lighting. And then the biggest thing is just practical. Again, just getting the

00:06:07 studio out of the house. So I have another bedroom to put all the kids that the Lord keeps giving me,

00:06:12 which is again, a blessing. So that's it. A little update for Right Response Ministries and especially

00:06:17 the Webbin family. All that being said, that's not why you're here. Well, some of you, that might

00:06:22 have been why some of you in the comments, you're like, we're not here for Matt Chandler. We're here

00:06:25 to see Franklin. So I didn't want to disappoint. So you guys are my favorite people. The ones who

00:06:29 are like, we're not here for Matt Chandler. We're here for Franklin. But for those of you who are

00:06:33 here for Matt Chandler and hearing some thoughts on that, we'll go ahead and hop to it. But let

00:06:38 me pray. I don't always do this. I know that sounds bad. I pray as a pastor in my prayer life

00:06:45 and with my family and all those kinds of things, probably close to a couple hours a day spent in

00:06:52 prayer, either with my kids and catechizing and all these different things. In the morning,

00:06:56 we do family worship. In the evening, we do family worship, praying for my wife. And then

00:07:00 my pastoral prayers, I pray by name for each member at Covenant Bible Church, where I pastor

00:07:05 in Central Texas. But in terms of public prayer, we have lots of prayers in our Lord's Day liturgy,

00:07:12 and I pray before the sermon, and there's multiple pastoral prayers throughout the service on Sunday,

00:07:17 but I don't always pray when I'm podcasting, but I want to be exceedingly wise. I want to be

00:07:24 courageous, but I also want to be very wise and careful, wise and careful in this podcast. So

00:07:31 join me as I pray, just asking the Lord to guide me and to help me to be faithful and careful and

00:07:37 wise today. All right, here we go. Father, we come to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

00:07:43 your son. We thank you for his sacrifice. We thank you that he has reconciled us to you by grace

00:07:50 alone, through faith alone, in him alone. And Lord, we pray for Matt Chandler and the village church,

00:07:57 the elders there, the deacons, the members. And we pray also for Acts 29 network, which I used to be

00:08:04 a part of as a pastor. Lord, I don't want to see that network fail. And I don't want to see the

00:08:11 Village Church fail. I don't want to see Matt Chandler fail. I don't want to see discord or

00:08:18 shame or difficulty with his marriage or with his children and his family and his church,

00:08:24 any of those things. So Lord, we pray for your grace. We pray for your provision, your protection.

00:08:31 Lord, we pray that whatever's going on, there's certain things that we are privy to that have

00:08:35 been publicly shared, which is what we'll discuss today. But you know the whole truth. You know the

00:08:42 whole story. You know all the things that have not been publicly shared. And Lord, we just pray

00:08:47 that you would work in the midst of a difficult situation, that you would bring clarity. And Lord,

00:08:53 I pray for the elders at the Vineyard Church, or the Vineyard, at the Village Church especially.

00:08:59 Lord, I pray that you would help them to be courageous, help them to be honorable, but

00:09:05 also Lord, help them to be humble and to not give in to any sin of envy or mutiny or division.

00:09:16 We don't know if any of that's going on in their hearts, but I know that that is quite

00:09:21 possible, that elder teams can be radically divided and that some of the things we see

00:09:27 from the public stage are actually just the fruit of private quarrels and disagreements and division

00:09:35 among elder teams. And so Lord, if there is any of that going on, Lord, I pray that the guys who

00:09:42 are true to your word would win. And whatever elders on that team who are involved in that

00:09:48 church, who have gone woke, who are drifting away from the sufficiency of scripture, who are

00:09:57 kowtowing to the spirit of the age, I pray that they would lose. If there are any elders like

00:10:05 that, that they would lose the battle and that they would be shamefully dismissed. And that

00:10:12 the village church would get back to some of its earlier days. And Lord, I pray that they would

00:10:19 reform in their convictions and biblical fidelity to be even better than they ever were. And that

00:10:24 they would get out of that woke nonsense that they've kind of delved into the last few years.

00:10:31 So Lord, we pray for repentance, not just with this situation, but all the other situations

00:10:36 that may be in the background and those situations that we know are in the background, like drifting

00:10:43 from the sufficiency of scripture with critical race theory and those kinds of things. Let this

00:10:48 be an opportunity for Acts 29 and for the village and for Matt Chandler to repent of those sins.

00:10:54 And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

00:10:57 All right, I've jotted down the briefest of notes,

00:11:01 but let me refresh my memory.

00:11:03 Okay, so the way I see it,

00:11:04 I think there are about four options here,

00:11:06 and I'm sure there are more,

00:11:07 but I wanna talk about four possible options.

00:11:11 And again, I don't wanna spend a bunch of time speculating.

00:11:14 Whenever I do speculate,

00:11:15 because I'm sure I will speculate a bit,

00:11:17 but I will do my best to be clear that it is speculation,

00:11:21 because I don't wanna make any definitive statements.

00:11:24 about things that we don't know for certain, because that's gossip or, well, no, that's not

00:11:32 gossip. Technically, if I make a definitive statement about something that we don't know,

00:11:37 and it turns out not to be true, that would be slander. That would be slander. If the definitive

00:11:41 statement I'm making about something we don't know that turns out not to be true is negative

00:11:47 and destructive, that seeks to tarnish their reputation, that would be slander by definition.

00:11:53 If I say something positive, not negative, but something positive, but again, making

00:11:57 a definitive positive statement about something we don't know, and it turns out not to be

00:12:02 true, that would be flattery, which is also a sin.

00:12:05 So I don't want to flatter.

00:12:07 I don't want to slander.

00:12:08 In terms of gossip, gossip is talking about things, even if you do know they're true,

00:12:13 not trying to destroy an image and also not trying to puff up somebody.

00:12:18 So it's neither slander nor flattery.

00:12:20 But gossip is having a conversation about someone behind their back, privately, with

00:12:28 no desire for it to be constructive or helpful for anyone, but simply to hurt someone in

00:12:37 their absence, that someone who should be privy to that information is not privy to

00:12:42 the information.

00:12:43 They're not there.

00:12:44 They're not there to defend themselves.

00:12:46 They're not there to share their side of the story.

00:12:50 That would be gossip.

00:12:51 Now, that said, you might say, well, Matt Chandler's not sitting in the room with you. 1.00

00:12:54 And I'm sure some of you probably will say something like that, something as stupid as 1.00

00:12:59 that. 1.00

00:12:59 And yes, that is a stupid thing to say. 1.00

00:13:02 Look, what we're talking about is public information. 0.99

00:13:05 And that's why I'm going to be careful about speculation.

00:13:08 And like I said, this is the disclaimer right out of the gate.

00:13:11 Anything that I am going to speculate, I will clearly label that as speculation.

00:13:16 I'm not going to make a definitive accusation or a definitive statement about something that we

00:13:22 don't know. So that means what we're talking about, we are allowed to talk about. You know

00:13:27 why? Because they chose to live stream it. The village church, their elders, somebody in charge

00:13:34 decided that this should be public. You might say, well, this should just be talked about with

00:13:39 the elders. Well, then why do they tell it to the church? Oh, okay. Oh, well, then this is just an

00:13:43 in-house conversation with the village church, okay, then why did they live stream it?

00:13:48 Look, they publicly put this information out there. The information that they publicly put

00:13:53 out there that they presented, that's the information that I'm going to discuss.

00:13:57 And I'm going to talk about possibilities of what might be going on, being clear to label

00:14:02 speculation as speculation, but then talking about some things that we really do know for certain.

00:14:07 And even with what we know for certain, the things that are definitive, the things that the village

00:14:11 church chose to publicly present, meaning it's fair game for us to commentate on for the good

00:14:18 of the church at large, the invisible universal global church. This is a public affair. There are

00:14:24 tons of Christians watching. There are people right now who their faith is going back and

00:14:30 forth, right? There are immature people in the faith that shouldn't be. They should be rooted

00:14:34 in Christ, not in Chandler, not in the village, not in Acts 29, but there are immature believers

00:14:39 that are being tossed to and fro right now.

00:14:42 Their faith is wavering.

00:14:44 It's hanging in the balance.

00:14:46 And so for the good of the global church,

00:14:48 the universal church,

00:14:49 I'm going to publicly address something

00:14:52 that is free game for me to publicly address

00:14:55 because the village church chose to put it out,

00:14:59 not just to their elders,

00:15:00 not just to their deacons,

00:15:02 not just to their members,

00:15:03 not just to everyone who happened to attend that Sunday,

00:15:06 but to the whole world, the whole world.

00:15:09 this wasn't leaked is my point. This wasn't leaked. This wasn't that somebody went to the village

00:15:15 that day and busted out their cell phone and recorded something that was supposed to be a

00:15:19 private members only conversation and then put it up on the worldwide web. That's not what happened.

00:15:25 That's not what happened. So this is free game, what we're talking about. And it matters. It's

00:15:30 worth talking about because people are wrestling with it. People need to understand, is it okay to

00:15:37 have a relationship with a woman that's not romantic and not sexual but too friendly and

00:15:43 what would be too these are conversations that we need to have these are things that amy bird

00:15:48 has been talking about and she's wrong she's wrong she is self-contradicting she's the type 0.99

00:15:55 of person and for those of you who don't know amy bird is a raging feminist with the opc which is 0.77

00:16:00 shocking but somehow that she just keeps being allowed to do what she does but amy bird has 0.96

00:16:06 basically said that, well, we believe in brother-sister relationships, which is the same

00:16:11 language that was used by Matt Chandler and the village and the elders there and the thing that

00:16:16 they publicly chose to put out to the whole world. We believe in brother and sister relationships

00:16:21 in Christ. We believe that a man and a woman who are not married to each other can have some form

00:16:28 of friendship, right? But then Amy Bird in the very next breath, she'll say that, but then the

00:16:34 very next breath she'll talk about the whole me too movement and and she sides with the me too

00:16:40 crazy people saying yeah something to the essence of yeah believe all women i but these people

00:16:46 these women claim to be victimized and i believe them so wait a second you're saying that men

00:16:51 should stick their neck out because of a brother the the the virtue of brother sisterly relationships

00:16:57 in christ that men should stick out their neck do something that makes them vulnerable take a risk

00:17:04 in befriending a woman in christ who is a sister in christ who they're not married to knowing that

00:17:10 that woman especially in our heated believe all women culture that we live in today may get

00:17:16 offended by that man right she might maybe he never makes it romantic or sexual what if she

00:17:22 ends up liking him and then he does the right thing let's say he's a married man like chan 1.00

00:17:26 and he turns her down but then she gets heated and says i'm gonna ruin you and say that you were

00:17:32 uh too chummy with me and too friendly with me and and yeah it wasn't romantic or sexual i don't

00:17:36 have text on you that would be binding in that way to to you know to prove it but but i could 0.94

00:17:41 say that you were inappropriate and that you were too friendly and i'm gonna ruin you and ruin your

00:17:45 reputation and this and that that's the culture that we live in so amy bird saying yeah brother

00:17:50 and sister relationship in christ we we we got to do that um the mike pence rule is a bad rule

00:17:56 that that's that's men treating women like they're all vipers like like women are just are just uh

00:18:02 walking uh biohazards they're just they're just uh just a living breathing risk and and that that 0.99

00:18:10 no man can ever be with a woman because because lord knows that that you know every woman is going 1.00

00:18:15 to want to be with him. That's just this narcissistic view of men that views women as

00:18:22 temptresses and views themselves as being so desirable that no woman could hold herself back

00:18:28 from him. And that's why we're in the problem that we're in. So Amy Bird is 100% with that

00:18:34 narrative. But then on the other flip side, in the very same breath, she's saying, oh, and also

00:18:40 every woman who claims to be victimized by a man, I believe. Do you see how that's contradicting?

00:18:46 Think about that for a second. Men should stick their necks out and be friends with women because

00:18:50 to do anything other than a man being friends with a woman who he's not married to, to not

00:18:55 be willing to do that is to be a prude like Mike Pence or Billy Graham, the Billy Graham rule, 0.61

00:19:03 and it's to subtly indict and accuse women of being temptresses and narcissistically view

00:19:09 yourself is irresistible. And yet, so men should be friends because it's rude not to be. Men should

00:19:16 be friends with any woman who pursues friendship. They should be willing to do that. And we should

00:19:21 believe all women when they say something about that man. Because anytime a woman claims to be 1.00

00:19:29 abused, 100% of the time she's telling the truth and the man actually is an abuser. Do you see how

00:19:34 those two things contradict one another? That's Amy Burt. So these are some of the reasons why

00:19:39 we're talking about it because it has larger application for the body of christ it has a

00:19:44 universal and invisible church relevancy so it's not just getting together and gossiping about

00:19:50 matt chandler so anybody's like well this isn't your business they made it our business i just

00:19:56 every time i do a podcast people do you know how many times people take one of my videos and and

00:20:03 they and they chop it up and and they they play part of the video and then they commentate on it

00:20:07 you know and say well this is why he's wrong about that and this is why he's wrong about that

00:20:11 and this is why he's wrong about that people do that all the time and and you know how often i

00:20:15 complain about it on my on my show on my podcast never you complain about it right now no i'm not

00:20:22 no they're allowed to do that because i'm producing and recording a public video public

00:20:30 content. This isn't, this isn't stolen from me. I am giving my consent to record this and to put

00:20:37 this on the internet. So if someone wants to critique it and I don't like what they have to

00:20:42 say, I could do a response if I'd like to, or I usually don't. What I can do instead is go play

00:20:49 with my baby boy because I don't really care. I don't lose sleep over it. I'm not worried about

00:20:55 it. I mean, all this members of my church are like, Joel, do you know how many people hate you

00:20:59 on the internet? And I just laugh. It doesn't matter. You know why? I care about people. I do

00:21:06 this whole internet thing because they are real people with real souls who really need Jesus.

00:21:11 You guys listening, those of you who support our ministry, you're real people. I'm grateful for you.

00:21:15 But for those of you who support, it means something. Those of you who don't and who hate

00:21:20 this ministry, it doesn't mean something. It doesn't. Because at the end of the day, I'm going

00:21:27 to stand or fall based on the standard of universal popular opinion of people on YouTube? No.

00:21:36 I'm going to stand or fall based off of God's judgment, his universal and transcendent

00:21:42 standard, his absolute morals and law. I'm doing what I'm doing because I believe it's right.

00:21:48 Right Response Ministries has a board. I could be fired. I have accountability. I have people

00:21:54 who, they're the ones who I am trusting to say,

00:21:58 hey, am I off?

00:21:59 Was I too harsh?

00:22:01 Was that not sound doctrine?

00:22:03 Was it, what?

00:22:05 And there's, no, no, brother.

00:22:07 You're not perfect.

00:22:08 You're not perfect, but you're faithful.

00:22:11 By God's grace, not because of you,

00:22:13 but by God's grace and God's grace alone,

00:22:15 you're faithful.

00:22:16 So go, keep going, keep going.

00:22:18 So guess what I'm doing?

00:22:18 I'm gonna keep going.

00:22:19 And when somebody talks about something, I don't care.

00:22:22 It's not gossip.

00:22:24 It's not.

00:22:24 They're allowed to do that.

00:22:25 I made it public.

00:22:27 You're allowed to critique public things.

00:22:29 So I'm going to give my commentary today, and it's not gossip.

00:22:32 And that's not a double standard.

00:22:34 Well, he wouldn't like it if people were talking about him.

00:22:36 That's why I just talked and said all the things that I just said over the last four

00:22:39 and a half minutes.

00:22:39 No, I don't care.

00:22:41 I don't care.

00:22:41 So for anybody who thinks that these kinds of things are gossip, feel free to just leave

00:22:45 right now.

00:22:46 I don't know why you're watching, except so that you can know what I'm going to say,

00:22:50 even though you disagree with it, so you can tell somebody about it and gossip.

00:22:52 Oh, gotcha. Okay. So hypocrites sign out everybody else who understands and has the

00:23:01 spiritual maturity, understand that this is a public thing and that it actually affects the 0.98

00:23:05 universal and invisible church globally that people are that maybe they shouldn't. Well,

00:23:11 they definitely shouldn't, but there are people with weak faith who are struggling with what to

00:23:15 and then also seeing like the Amy Bird stuff, the wider parameters of what is the nature of

00:23:19 relationship between a man and a woman? Are platonic relationships between a Christian man

00:23:24 and a Christian woman who are not married to each other? Are those even possible? Anybody who sees 0.65

00:23:29 the relevancy and importance of those kinds of conversations, you're in the right place.

00:23:35 That's what we're going to talk about. All right. So there's all the disclaimers. There's four

00:23:39 situations, potential situations. Now, some of this will be speculation and I'll do my best

00:23:45 to label those things. But in terms of what's going on at the Village Church, what in the world

00:23:51 is actually going on with Matt Chandler? Because I think that's kind of, we got to start there.

00:23:56 That's the problem. That's what people are wrestling with right now. They're like, okay,

00:24:00 so wait a second. It was specified by Chandler and reiterated that he's not disqualified from

00:24:08 ministry. And that these direct messages on Instagram with this woman, according to Chandler,

00:24:16 and it wasn't corrected by the guy who got up and followed him, his wife knew about it.

00:24:21 Her husband knew about it. And they were not sexual and they were not romantic. And that's

00:24:30 the elder's assessment. And that's the assessment of a third party. That's another thing that we

00:24:35 should talk about, because I think that's dumb. That is not biblical. This third-party organization 0.96

00:24:41 outside of the church's governance, outside of the ecclesiastical authority of the elders and

00:24:48 the members of that church, this extra party that I don't even know if the organization is Christian

00:24:53 or not. I know that when it came to the SBC, trying to measure all the accounts of all the

00:25:00 women who said that they were physically abused, sexually abused in the SBC, I know that the

00:25:05 SBC chose to put on payroll an organization that is not Christian and that actually is LGBT

00:25:13 affirming. So you're going to get the guys who agree with Sodom and Gomorrah to come and tell 0.97

00:25:21 the SBC, the people who are supposed to be the church, the people of God, what is moral and

00:25:26 what is immoral. Let me say that again. The SBC thought it would be a good idea to get Sodom and 0.91

00:25:33 Gomorrah to weigh in on morality and specifically cases of sexual abuse with the people of God.

00:25:42 That's the opposite of 1 Corinthians 6. 1 Corinthians 6, we always take it out of context

00:25:46 and we say, 1 Corinthians 6 says that we shouldn't ever sue somebody. That Christians, you know, 1.00

00:25:50 Christians should just let things go, right? Because it says, why not rather be wronged? 1.00

00:25:54 Well, that's true. There is something about allowing yourself to be wrong, not always trying

00:25:59 to be proven right. That's one lesson from 1 Corinthians 6. But the other lesson from 1

00:26:04 Corinthians 6 is not that believers can never actually have any real grievances, and not that

00:26:09 believers with grievances always have to sacrifice and allow themselves to be wrong, that they can't

00:26:15 have any avenue to pursue justice. No, believers can have a valid grievance, and they can pursue

00:26:22 valid avenues of justice with their grievances, even when their grievance is with another brother

00:26:28 or sister in christ what what what paul says in first corinthians 6 is not allowed is for two

00:26:34 believers in the church to go and seek justice a just ruling from the wisdom of the peanut gallery

00:26:43 aka pagans he says what you bring these things before pagans do you not know that we the church

00:26:53 are going to judge angels we're going to be judging angels one day and yet you're telling

00:27:00 me there's no one wise among you not one person in the church could weigh in with godly wisdom

00:27:06 not worldly wisdom not that is first of all demonic but but godly wisdom that is from above

00:27:13 not one person in the church born again by grace through faith in christ has wisdom which james

00:27:20 chapter one says, if anyone lacks wisdom, it's an easy solution. Ask God who gives without finding

00:27:25 reproach. So there's not one person who's asked God for wisdom among the people of God in the

00:27:31 church who can weigh in and help reconcile this situation, help you gain justice for your

00:27:37 alleged grievance. You have to go to pagans. So the big correction by Paul is not just that

00:27:42 Christians can't have grievances. It's not just that Christians have to let everything go. It's

00:27:46 not just that christians can't ever pursue practical means of justice in this life it's 0.54

00:27:52 that christians should not have to get the the the two cents from the pagan peanut gallery

00:27:59 that's the lesson which the sbc knew that lesson apparently no one of influence in the sbc

00:28:07 has read first corinthians chapter six now the village church i don't know this organization so

00:28:12 i'm not going to say it's pagan i don't know if it's lgbt affirming like what what the sbc did

00:28:17 with their organization that they brought in to weigh in on these cases but my point is

00:28:21 that is extra biblical especially so i'm going to start there especially for a baptist church

00:28:28 and for the record the village is a part of not just act 29 but the sbc the southern baptist

00:28:34 convention do you know one of the things that makes you a baptist church baptism joel baptism

00:28:40 That's true, but it's not just baptism.

00:28:43 All right, so think about this.

00:28:45 Baptists have a particular view of baptism.

00:28:48 It's in the name, Baptist. 0.72

00:28:50 They are credo-baptists.

00:28:51 They hold to a believer's baptism, 0.88

00:28:52 that baptism should follow, not proceed,

00:28:55 but follow a credible profession of faith.

00:28:57 So baptism is in the name of Baptist.

00:29:01 But there's a bunch of guys that I know

00:29:03 that because they're infant,

00:29:04 they hold to infant baptism, pedo-baptism,

00:29:07 baptism of the children of believers

00:29:09 without a credible profession of faith, 0.78

00:29:11 they're like, hey, I'm Presbyterian.

00:29:14 Well, here's the deal. 0.76

00:29:16 Baptist, right?

00:29:18 Baptism is in the name for Baptist,

00:29:20 but Presbytery is in the name for Presbyterians. 0.71

00:29:24 So if you're baptizing babies,

00:29:27 but you don't belong to a Presbytery,

00:29:30 you are not Presbyterian.

00:29:32 See, the two main issues,

00:29:34 both in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith

00:29:37 and the Westminster,

00:29:38 sister. The two big areas that they differ, because they're like 96% the same. The two big

00:29:43 areas that they differ, one is baptism. Everybody knows that. Infant baptism versus believer's

00:29:48 baptism. Paedo, credo. But there's another thing. The second thing is church polity. That word 0.95

00:29:55 polity simply means governance. Who's in charge? And you might say, well, God's in charge. Jesus

00:30:01 is the head of his church. Great. That's a great spiritual answer. And it is, it is technically 0.51

00:30:06 biblically true but the question is who has human authority who does jesus lead through jesus is

00:30:14 head of his church absolutely the bible is is the final arbiter of all truth it is the final

00:30:20 authority but the question is who gets to say what the bible says what do you do you say the bible is

00:30:27 the final authority what do you do when you have two people who both say the bible is the final

00:30:30 authority, but don't agree on what the Bible says, then you need to understand, you need to have

00:30:36 polity, church polity, a certain structure, governance to be able to decide when disagreements

00:30:41 arise, and they will, to be able to decide who gets the final interpretive authority on the Bible.

00:30:48 Who gets the interpretive authority? That's the question. Now, that's one of the things that I

00:30:54 think is a strength, a massive strength, in being not just a Calvinistic Baptist, as Chandler is,

00:31:00 or MacArthur. Now they're very different, but they're both, neither is confessionally reformed.

00:31:05 They are Calvinistic Baptists. There is a great strength in being confessionally reformed because

00:31:11 the first authority in terms of who gets to interpret the Bible, Bible's the highest authority.

00:31:16 Bible's the only infallible authority. That's the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. But in terms of who

00:31:21 gets interpretive authority, who gets to say what the Bible says? What does it actually mean? What's

00:31:28 the correct interpretation? The confession. Okay, if it's beyond the confession, it's outside of

00:31:34 those parameters, then you go further, right? Presbyterians, the lead pastor, the teaching

00:31:39 pastor, teaching elder, pastor of a Presbyterian church is not a member of his local church,

00:31:46 which I don't like. I think pastors should be members in their own church that they pastor.

00:31:50 But in the Presbyterian, that's one of the things that I disagree with. Just like my disagreement

00:31:55 with baptism, I actually have stronger disagreements with Presbyterian polity.

00:32:00 One of the things is that their teaching elders are members of their presbytery, not their

00:32:06 local church.

00:32:07 I don't like that.

00:32:08 Now, their presbytery is outside of the local church and would oversee a region of multiple

00:32:14 local churches.

00:32:15 And then it goes higher and higher and higher.

00:32:17 And then you have your general assembly.

00:32:19 You have like the PCA gets together and it's over all of these Presbyterian churches.

00:32:25 in America. But the point is polity. There are tiers. There is hierarchy. There is governance

00:32:32 for deciding who interprets the Bible. When we both disagree on what the Bible is saying,

00:32:40 its interpretation, who wins out? How do we resolve those matters? How do we solve those

00:32:45 matters? So first and foremost, as a Baptist, the Presbyterian, I might understand. The Anglican,

00:32:53 I might understand, right? There are a few major forms of church polity. One is an Episcopal form

00:32:59 of church polity. Catholics, Roman Catholics adhere to this. Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox or

00:33:06 Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, they agree with this. But also, of course, Episcopalians.

00:33:12 And that's your hierarchy where it goes all the way up. And the way that you can tell who has

00:33:17 more authority is by the size of their hat. The bigger the hat, and I'm literally, literally an

00:33:22 actual hat right the pope has the biggest hat whoever has the biggest hat that's the guy who's

00:33:26 in charge but it's a hierarchy going up okay um there's presbyterian polity they have presbyteries

00:33:34 right so it's not just one man at the top and to be fair um episcopalians would be different than

00:33:40 than roman you know the pope is that's unique to roman catholicism but greek orthodoxy is basically

00:33:47 the same except they have a plurality of popes instead of a singular pope but the same same

00:33:51 thing, an Episcopal polity, right? Where you go from, you go from priests to, to bishops, to,

00:33:57 you know, to cardinals and all the way up. Okay. There's the Baptist polity. Okay. I'll get to

00:34:03 that last because that deals with Chandler, but there's Presbyterian polity. And I've already

00:34:06 kind of described that where you have, they get that a lot of that's from Acts chapter 15. The

00:34:11 reason why I disagree is because Acts chapter 15 has apostles. Apostles are sitting on this council

00:34:16 in Jerusalem. So there's a council in Jerusalem that appears to oversee not just the local

00:34:21 church in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem church, but other churches. It has authority to send like

00:34:25 Paul and Barnabas to go and check out what's going on, you know, in other places. And so

00:34:30 Presbyterians would use that to say that there's a council that oversees, right? It's not one guy,

00:34:36 it's not an Episcopal hierarchy, but there is a council that is outside of just one local church

00:34:41 that oversees multiple churches in a region, okay? So that's your Presbyterian polity. Here's

00:34:47 the deal. Baptist polity, the name of the game. This is the hill. Baptists will die on two hills. 0.99

00:34:54 This is what makes you a Baptist. Literally, this is it. You baptize believers and then autonomy of 0.86

00:34:59 the local church. You baptize believers only and autonomy of the local church. Meaning when it

00:35:10 comes to Baptists, yeah, sure, you could belong to denomination, but technically in theological

00:35:15 terms, it's an affiliation, it's a fellowship, but it's an association. But the SBC is not

00:35:22 actually in technical terms, a denomination. It's called that, it's called the largest

00:35:26 Protestant denomination, you know, all these different things. But any true Baptist will 0.99

00:35:31 tell you, no, no, no, it's not a denomination. Meaning the SBC, what they can do is they can

00:35:35 remove your status as an SBC church. But what they can't do is the SBC cannot come into your

00:35:41 local church and make any authoritative decisions. Why? Because that's what it means to be a Baptist.

00:35:49 Baptists believe in two things, baptism for believers and autonomy of the local church.

00:35:54 Now I'm a particular Baptist and that's, I don't just mean I'm particular about things, which I am,

00:35:59 but that's, that's the actual term, a particular reformed Baptist, meaning I'm confessional.

00:36:04 I hold to the 1689, so I don't have just two things. I've got a bunch of things. But a bunch

00:36:10 of those things I share with my Presbyterian brothers. The two things that set me aside that

00:36:13 make me different and unique from them, again, are the same two things, autonomy of the local church

00:36:17 and baptism of believers, a believer's baptism, okay? So autonomy of the local church, what do

00:36:22 we mean there? There is no ecclesiastical, no formal official, you can have somebody counsel,

00:36:28 you can have this, you can have that, but there is no formal official authority from outside of

00:36:33 the local church. Now, we can object at this point and say, well, wait a second, you know,

00:36:37 the elders bring in this third party. Um, they're not bringing them in to make a binding decision.

00:36:41 The elders are making the decision at the village church. Um, but they just want to bring someone

00:36:45 else in to observe, to observe. And I think that's where right there, I start to get a little bit

00:36:53 wary. Okay. So in their defense, I'm sure that that's the case. I'm sure that's the case that

00:36:57 there's, they're not saying, Hey, this, this organization, we're going to give them full

00:37:01 ecclesiastical authority to make the decision of whether or not to fire Chandler, whether or not

00:37:05 to send them on a paid sabbatical and keep them or blah, blah, blah, blah. They're not going to

00:37:09 get to make the decision. I'm sure that that's the position of the elders at the village church.

00:37:15 But then why are you bringing them in? I just, first Corinthians six, I would just say, as Paul

00:37:19 said, is there no one wise among you? Do you not know that we will be judging angels?

00:37:28 Like you couldn't, the village church is a big church, right? And if this is as serious as it

00:37:33 seems like they're making it. I mean, it seems like they're making it serious to do it in front

00:37:38 of everybody. Chandler is immediately on an indefinite sabbatical, relieved from his role

00:37:45 as preaching pastor at the village. And he immediately following suit was relieved of his

00:37:51 role as president of Acts 29. I mean, they're making it seem really serious. So if something

00:37:55 this serious, I'm sure there's lots of problems going on in the village church. There's plenty

00:37:59 of work to be done as an elder. I'm sure they have their hands full, full plates for an

00:38:03 elder at the village church but this seems like like top priority and and with a plurality of

00:38:11 elders many of them dozens of elders like nobody had the time to read the messages and nobody was

00:38:18 wise among you nobody can make this call no pastor right we got to go to the peanut gallery always

00:38:25 and and so then you have to start to ask the question why what what what does the peanut

00:38:29 gallery have to offer? Well, I think there's one thing, right? And here's some speculation. I told

00:38:34 you I'd name it when I, when I was going to do it. All right. So I'm about to do it. Here's some

00:38:38 speculation. Here's one thing that the peanut gallery has to offer PR. And what I mean by that

00:38:47 is that the elders at the village church is woke as Chandler has been the last few years that I

00:38:56 don't appreciate. That's why I left Acts 29. Some of the things that he's done, his

00:39:01 Baptocostal stuff with dreams and visions of pirate ships and sharks. I don't know if you

00:39:07 guys remember that. You can look it up. Pretty easy to find. But there's some wacky mystical

00:39:12 prophecy stuff that I don't like. And then even more than that, the woke stuff that I really

00:39:19 don't like. But as wacky as those things are, I'm sure the village church, there's gotta be

00:39:28 a regenerate elder or two, even with the church being bad. And I don't think it always was bad,

00:39:34 but I think it's gotten kind of bad. But even with the church being bad, I bet you they still have

00:39:39 some faithful elders. I say regenerate, I'm being facetious. More than that, regenerate and faithful

00:39:46 with some wisdom, why can't they weigh in? Why can't they just decide in-house what to do?

00:39:54 Why are you getting someone else? I think this is why. The reason why you get someone from the

00:39:57 outside who very likely is not a Christian, that doesn't have your standard, God's standard, 0.63

00:40:03 for these kinds of things, why do you get them? Because you get the non-Christian group to weigh 0.66

00:40:07 in because the non-Christian group is going to be able to tell you what all the non-Christians 0.72

00:40:12 are going to think. Why do you get the non-Christian group to weigh in? So that they can tell you what

00:40:18 all the non-Christians are going to think. And these days, a lot of pastors and a lot of churches

00:40:24 and a lot of denominations like the SBC really, really, really care what all the non-Christians 0.94

00:40:29 are going to think. So they're not just trying to render a righteous judgment according to God's

00:40:33 standard in his word, to actually just decide what to do in the matter. They're also deciding

00:40:39 how to do it, how to publicly do it. What's our PR stunt? How do we public? And I guarantee you,

00:40:49 I guarantee you from those assessments, that's where they got the idea to do it this way,

00:40:55 to get ahead of it, to make it this public thing. I'm very sure. Okay. So the speculation is,

00:41:02 I think that that's probably part of the motive. How do we get ahead of this so that we don't get

00:41:07 ripped apart by the pagans we we need a few pagans to coach us on how to appease the pagans

00:41:13 because we live in a pagan culture that hates churches and even though matt chandler has as

00:41:21 kind of you know kowtowed to to some of the left with his woke rhetoric with his support of eric

00:41:30 mason who wrote woke church and was on the international board for acts 29 when i was a

00:41:35 Even though there's been some of these concessions from the village, from Chandler, we should know by now that you can't ever be leftist enough.

00:41:50 And so, yeah, the left still hates. 0.95

00:41:53 I'm talking about the political left, talking about godless people who want to trans kids, right, and tell little white kids in school that they're inherently immoral and colonizers. 0.97

00:42:03 I'm talking about that group. 0.53

00:42:05 um, yeah, that group doesn't like, uh, woke churches because woke churches, even woke

00:42:11 churches aren't woke enough, not enough, at least not the village. Maybe some of them,

00:42:16 if you've completely sold out with all orthodoxy, you're a universalist. Um, you, you've denied the

00:42:21 bodily resurrection and, uh, the virgin birth and, and all these kinds of, and you're gay affirming 0.99

00:42:27 and blah, blah, blah. Uh, but the village is not that right. The village has some problems. I've 1.00

00:42:32 already detailed those. But the village is not that far by any stretch, by any stretch, which

00:42:38 means, so praise God, they're not that far. But what that means is that unbelievers are not going 1.00

00:42:47 to like them no matter what they do. So why care? Why care? Well, and I think part of the reason why 1.00

00:42:54 is because they're trying to preemptively fend off any kind of attack that would come from the

00:43:00 outside and not from the outside, from other ministries like mine or from other churches or

00:43:06 denominations. No, no, no. I think they're trying to fend off from the news circuits,

00:43:11 from media outlets, non-Christian, unbelieving media outlets that would want to come in here 0.94

00:43:17 and try to me too the whole situation and destroy the village, whatever's left of it. 0.88

00:43:24 Right? I mean, I'm sure they've taken a hit with all their woke antics over the past few years,

00:43:29 and they're definitely going to be taking a hit right now with what's going on.

00:43:32 But if there's anything left, if there's anything left when this is all said and done of the

00:43:36 village church and Acts 29 and these kinds of things that Matt Chandler has been at the

00:43:42 helm of, the locust will come, the leftist news, legacy news, media, organized, they

00:43:53 will come and devour whatever's left. They will destroy all of it. No stone left on top of another

00:44:00 stone, right? Like the Jerusalem temple in 80, 70 style. They will do that because it's a perfect

00:44:07 me too moment. It's a perfect believe all women kind of moment. And as far as we know, this 0.99

00:44:12 particular woman isn't even complaining. It was her friend that confronted Chandler, right? At the

00:44:18 church. That's what they've told us publicly. At the church, a friend of the woman that he was

00:44:23 DMing on Instagram, she confronted and said, I don't like this. This is inappropriate. It's too

00:44:29 chummy. The way that you're joking, your jokes are inappropriate. We don't know what those jokes

00:44:34 were because we've been told on the one hand that they're not sexual or romantic. So they could be

00:44:39 jokes about drinking. They could be alcohol or something. I don't know. Something that's

00:44:43 inappropriate, but it's not sexual and it's not romantic. But the point is, it's not even that

00:44:46 woman that Chandler's been messaging, it's her friend. But the deal is, even that friend could

00:44:54 make a lot of trouble, could make a lot of trouble by going to the unbelieving world and shining a

00:45:01 light on here's a church even, and you might say, oh, well, they wouldn't criticize the village

00:45:06 because Chandler has been, you know, he's been dancing to their tune. He's, you know, he's been

00:45:12 jumping through their hoops with all of his woke stuff. No, it's not enough. It's not enough

00:45:17 for the pagans. The village still believes that marriage is between one biological man and one

00:45:25 biological woman. That's bigotry to our culture today. And so, yes, they would hop on any

00:45:30 opportunity to destroy Matt Chandler and destroy the village church. So, I think that's why the

00:45:35 pagans were consulted, right? So, that's that. But 1 Corinthians 6, it doesn't matter. It doesn't

00:45:40 matter why. It doesn't matter how hostile the unbelieving world might be in any given cultural 1.00

00:45:45 moment. God's word is true in all seasons. In all seasons. 1 Corinthians 6, is there not anyone wise

00:45:54 among you? Meaning, deal with it in-house. And especially if you're a Baptist and one of your

00:46:00 go-to dogma beliefs as a Baptist is autonomy of the local church. We deal with things in-house.

00:46:06 then deal with it in house and, and don't go outside. Okay. So, all right. So one possibility

00:46:14 is that they went outside with all these things and we want to consult, you know, the peanut

00:46:19 gallery over here and we're going to make this big public statement. And cause, cause I think

00:46:23 a lot of people just, why are you making this such a big deal? So serious if it's not serious,

00:46:28 cause you're basically saying this is really serious, but we want to let you know it's not

00:46:32 serious that's why we're all confused but they but they did it publicly they wanted us all to

00:46:38 know they made that decision if you're tuning in right now on the live stream they made that

00:46:42 decision we're going to make this public information for everyone to watch we want everyone

00:46:48 to see this this is not an in-house conversation with just our elders or even just our church and

00:46:52 its members we want to make this public for the whole wide world because it's serious we also

00:46:59 want you to know that it's not serious. And that's why we're all confused. This is very serious.

00:47:05 He is stepping down from ministry effective immediately and indefinitely, no return date.

00:47:12 And also he is absolutely not disqualified. And it absolutely was not a breach of 1 Timothy 1

00:47:21 and Titus, or 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, because it was not sexual or romantic. It was not adultery.

00:47:26 he's still a one-woman man but also kind of not but he is he's he's not a one-woman man

00:47:34 as ideally as you would like but he is not not a one-woman man to the point of disqualification

00:47:40 but effectively he needs to function as though he's disqualified immediately because it's so

00:47:46 serious but also he's not disqualified because it's not that serious right that it's confusing

00:47:53 okay so why make it so serious if it's not that serious one possibility uh because maybe it's more

00:47:59 serious than they're saying all right so here's another speculation so maybe number one is maybe

00:48:05 it's worse and let's pray that's not let's pray right now father god we pray that it's not worse

00:48:10 lord um i love matt chandler i've met him in person gotten to speak to him um i've been under

00:48:17 his leadership in the past i'm bummed about the way that he's been going with acts 29 in the

00:48:22 village and the woke nonsense, but Lord, we want good things for him, good things for his church,

00:48:29 good things for his wife, his marriage, his kids, his family. And so Lord, I pray, I pray that there

00:48:36 is nothing worse than what's been said. That when they said that this relationship with this woman

00:48:44 is not sexual or romantic, I pray that that would be true and that it would not be worse and that

00:48:49 there would not be other women that surface later. So Lord, we pray that it wouldn't be worse.

00:48:54 We ask for your mercy in that regard. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. So one potential,

00:48:59 it could be worse. Let's pray it's not. Number two, here's a second potential, could be true.

00:49:06 True meaning the very, very confusing thing that we were told, that it's really serious so that

00:49:13 everyone needs to know and he has to be dismissed immediately and indefinitely but also he's not

00:49:20 disqualified because it's not that serious so the very serious thing that's not serious could be

00:49:25 true and i don't even i just and so then when you're wondering well then then why are they

00:49:33 make it if it's true that it wasn't romantic if it's true that it wasn't sexual if it's true

00:49:37 that it's just this woman there's no other women and there's nothing else going on behind the

00:49:41 saints, and there's no other moral failure in his life. If all that is true, and it's true that it's

00:49:46 not disqualifying by biblical standards of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, then why is he going on

00:49:52 a paid sabbatical immediately? If all that's true, why are you acting? If it's true that it's not

00:50:00 serious enough to disqualify, why are you treating it so seriously? And again, in that case,

00:50:07 I think that there are a couple sub options. Okay. Um, if it's, if it's really not romantic,

00:50:12 it's really not sexual. It's really not disqualifying. If it's really not disqualifying,

00:50:17 then here, here are your options. One, one, um, the me too thing and just trying to get ahead of

00:50:26 it. Uh, this friend of this woman was really upset and threatened Chandler and threatened

00:50:31 the elders to shed some light on something to expose this and to use it to make things bad

00:50:39 for them publicly, um, to go to some kind of source or this or that. And they wanted to get

00:50:44 ahead of it. Um, and they wanted to announce it first because somebody else was threatening to

00:50:49 publicly announce it. So they wanted to, to get out with the information first, right? So that's

00:50:56 one potential is, um, if what they're saying is true, it's really not disqualifying. Then why do

00:51:00 why are you acting kind of like it is the way they're handling it is the way you would handle

00:51:04 an elder who's actually disqualified that's my point the way that they're handling it is the

00:51:11 way that you would handle an elder who actually is disqualified while saying that he's not

00:51:17 disqualified and he's not fired he's going on a paid sabbatical so so why are you doing it this

00:51:23 way if he actually isn't disqualified, if what you're saying is true. I think because somebody

00:51:31 was going to make this a nightmare for you. That's one option. And so you had to get ahead of it and

00:51:37 you had to be serious enough about it to where if that person then dropped their story later,

00:51:43 people would say, well, Chandler was always, he was already honest about this. We heard it from

00:51:48 him first. He confessed. And he even admitted that although it wasn't sexual or romantic,

00:51:56 it was inappropriate. And the elders of the village church did a good job. And they told

00:52:02 him he needed to take time because he wasn't healthy and he needs to get restored. And they're

00:52:06 going to be working with him and working with his family. The village church takes sin seriously.

00:52:10 And even though it wasn't sin to the point of being disqualified, any kind of sin they take

00:52:15 seriously, especially among leaders. See, I think that's one possibility. So why do you treat it so

00:52:22 seriously if it's not disqualifying? Because you don't. I'm telling you, that's not what you do.

00:52:27 That's not what you should do. I've been a pastor for a while. It's not a good move.

00:52:31 But you do do that, not because this is how sin should be treated. A man's disqualified or it's 0.72

00:52:38 not. See, that's the problem with this. It's this third category. It's an unbiblical category. 1.00

00:52:42 So the biblical categories, there's two categories.

00:52:45 You're a pastor, someone brings something against you.

00:52:48 Maybe it wasn't wise, but it's not disqualifying.

00:52:50 You might offer a concession or apology and say,

00:52:53 hey, I'll try to do better in the future,

00:52:54 but this is not disqualifying from office

00:52:55 and I'm going to continue.

00:52:57 And the elders back you up.

00:53:00 Say, yep, because we have objective metrics

00:53:03 in the word of God for the qualifications for an elder.

00:53:06 And this does not breach those.

00:53:08 These are not subjective qualifications for elders.

00:53:10 They are objective metrics from the word of God.

00:53:13 You're either in or you're out.

00:53:15 You either crossed the line or you didn't.

00:53:17 If you didn't cross a line, but maybe you got close to the line or there's, I don't

00:53:22 know, the metric for elder is the standard is not perfection.

00:53:26 So elder is still sin.

00:53:27 But the question is, is the sin disqualifying?

00:53:30 If it's not disqualifying, right?

00:53:31 There are two categories.

00:53:32 If it's not disqualifying, you just, you move on and you apologize privately.

00:53:38 if there was sin, not disqualifying sin, but still sin because elders still are imperfect,

00:53:43 morally imperfect, then you apologize to the necessary party. If there's something to apologize

00:53:48 for, you maybe add some increased accountability in that particular area with your fellow elders

00:53:54 and you press on. Maybe even take a couple of weeks off. Sure. But you don't make this big

00:54:00 public announcement and take a sabbatical that's indefinite with no return date and tell everybody

00:54:07 you really, really, really messed up, but you didn't really, really, really, really,

00:54:10 really mess up. So the two categories are, it's not disqualifying, and so you move on.

00:54:19 Or it is disqualifying, and I'll say it like this. Here's the simple rule of thumb. If it

00:54:25 is disqualifying, you don't get a paid vacation. You don't get money from the church to go on a

00:54:32 sabbatical you don't get to keep your job is what i'm saying if an elder really is disqualified

00:54:38 he's fired he's removed from the office and he's fired from staff at the church that's what happens

00:54:45 effective immediately not vacation see you guys later i'll return sometime in the meantime i'm

00:54:49 going to keep getting paid immediately no no fired immediately donald trump style you're fired right

00:54:55 that so it's either either disqualified and you're out or qualified in and you're in and somebody

00:55:02 still has a grievance, and the person with the grievance, you tell them to take a hike

00:55:05 because their grievance is illegitimate, or you make a concession because their grievance

00:55:11 is legitimate, but it's not disqualifying.

00:55:13 You messed up, but it's not disqualifying because we have objective metrics of what's

00:55:17 in, what's out, what's disqualifying, and what's not disqualifying.

00:55:20 And so maybe you add some accountability, maybe even take a couple weeks off from the

00:55:24 pulpit, but you don't make this big worldwide public announcement with tears.

00:55:29 I mean, the guy was like, something's going on.

00:55:32 he was as he said disoriented he distraught disoriented i think is a euphemism he was

00:55:41 disturbed he was disturbed so it's either disqualifying and you're out not paid vacation

00:55:50 but fired or it's not disqualified uh fine and and you're in and if you do take a two-week break

00:55:57 nobody knows you don't announce it to the church i'm taking two week what break because

00:56:01 because on my Instagram, I sent some, like, no, no, it's private. You protect the pastor's dignity.

00:56:10 He sinned. But if it's not a disqualifying sin, the sins that you have to rebuke publicly,

00:56:15 this is in scriptures. 1 Timothy 3 is your qualifications. 1 Timothy 5 talks about

00:56:20 rebuking an elder before them all publicly so that the rest may stand in fear.

00:56:25 but that's if someone persists in sin and the implication is because it's on the heels of

00:56:32 first timothy three with the qualifications if it's a disqualifying sin a persistent disqualifying

00:56:38 sin and there's a public rebuke and some measure of explanation uh to to the congregation to the

00:56:47 members of the church, he's being rebuked for this. And he is disqualified for this, committing

00:56:55 this sin, which the Bible says is disqualifying for a man if he holds the office of elder.

00:57:02 So there's two categories. You're not disqualified. Take a week off from the pulpit, maybe.

00:57:11 If you messed up, maybe say, I'm sorry. If you need to say, I'm sorry. And ask a couple of the

00:57:17 elders to check in on you more regularly. Maybe delete your Instagram account. But you do those

00:57:25 things and it's just like nobody's the wiser. You don't share with the whole wide world and you're

00:57:33 not in tears and you're not taking an indefinite leave of absence. You don't do that if you're not

00:57:43 disqualified. So you're either not disqualified, in which case you don't do what the village just

00:57:48 did, what Chandler just did, if you're really not disqualified. Or you are disqualified,

00:57:53 but in which case you also don't do what the village just did. You don't have a man who

00:57:58 actually is disqualified and then pay him to take a vacation. You fire him. Two categories.

00:58:06 that only, only two categories. So my first concern is the peanut gallery pagan group coming 1.00

00:58:16 in. That looks like help us with our PR because somebody is going to try to meet to this. 1.00

00:58:23 Somebody outside of the church or inside of the church or whatever, help us get bulletproof

00:58:27 so that we can survive this. That's my first problem going outside. Is there not anyone

00:58:33 wise among you. You're going to judge angels one day, the elders, the church, you can handle this.

00:58:39 And you're doing that as a Baptist. And Baptists, we're in-house. We're autonomy to local church

00:58:44 guys. That's my first thing. Going to the pagan peanut gallery. Number two, the third category.

00:58:50 Qualified, disqualified. There's not dis, but also not dis, qualified, qualified, dis, qualified,

00:58:59 qualified, disqualified. No, that's just, that's not a thing. That third category is not a thing.

00:59:05 You're either disqualified, fired. Qualified, a week off. And privacy. And some added

00:59:15 accountability, but it's not this public, no. So, yeah, it makes me think that things are worse,

00:59:25 and it is disqualifying, it was sexual, and it was romantic, or that's speculation. I told you

00:59:31 I'd say when it's speculated. That's speculation. I actually don't think it's that. I really don't.

00:59:35 Could be. I hope it's not. I've already prayed for you guys just joining on. We've literally spent

00:59:39 time in this podcast praying for Chandler about that. I hope it's not that. I pray it's not that.

00:59:44 That it's not actually worse. That it really wasn't romantic, and it really wasn't sexual,

00:59:48 and that it's really not disqualifying. I pray that that's all true. So then why make such a

00:59:55 big deal. I think just, I think it's tipping the hat to the pagans. I think it's PR, getting ahead

01:00:02 of some situation. I think it's, yeah, I think it's a PR stunt. Or, here's the other option,

01:00:10 and this is the last option, or the elders are divided. And I don't have time to share my story,

01:00:19 which I've given tiny bits and pieces over the last couple of years. And one day I will do

01:00:27 probably a full show on it. So I'm not going to go into my whole story today. Someday I might.

01:00:35 But I'll just say this. Over the last two years, you need to know this because some of you guys

01:00:40 are pastors. And so you already know this, but a lot of you guys, you're listening to this,

01:00:44 you're not pastors. And you know what you felt over the last two years, right? It's

01:00:49 it's COVID tyranny, civil tyranny, medical tyranny. Churches shut down for months,

01:00:57 forcing pastors requiring you cannot come to Christ as the, as the saints gathered together

01:01:04 on the Lord's day and to the Lord's table without a mask. It's what does it take you to get to the

01:01:09 Lord's table to worship with the saints? Faith alone, plus a mask, plus a jab, plus a, anytime

01:01:17 time it's faith plus, you might want to sit a couple of plays out. That's a bad move. And you

01:01:23 guys know that. Churches did that. And so one of the things is massive division. And if that wasn't

01:01:30 enough, just a couple of months later, summer of love, 2020, right? Burning down half the country,

01:01:38 looting, rioting, critical race theory, George Floyd, right? If he gets four like global 0.64

01:01:45 funerals with a zillion, quadrillion people in attendance, but your grandma,

01:01:53 she dies alone in a nursing home, thanks to Cuomo, and she doesn't get a funeral.

01:01:58 You do a little memorial at your house. Yeah, yeah. It was the tyranny with COVID

01:02:07 and the wokeness with CRT. Those were the two big things. Since then, though, it didn't stop.

01:02:15 Since then, what has happened most recently?

01:02:18 Well, most recently, Roe got overturned. 0.93

01:02:21 Praise God.

01:02:21 It was never about Roe, but still, praise God, Roe got overturned.

01:02:25 Objectively, less babies will be murdered.

01:02:28 Will there still be pills and potions?

01:02:30 Yes.

01:02:31 For the abolitionists, will you have to go?

01:02:34 Will we, because I would be joining you, have to go to Walmart and to the pharmacy section

01:02:38 to preach God's word and the gospel there instead of Planned Parenthood

01:02:43 because it's been shut down in some of the red states.

01:02:46 Yes, there's still a fight to be fought.

01:02:49 Roe, we should have functioned

01:02:50 as though it was never a thing.

01:02:51 It was a Supreme Court opinion.

01:02:53 It was never law.

01:02:54 It's always going to be state by state.

01:02:56 Incrementalism is good

01:02:57 insofar as it represents state by state,

01:03:00 not splitting the penny a million ways, 0.97

01:03:03 the pro-life industry just making money off of suckers 0.78

01:03:05 that never actually wants to end abortion, okay? 0.88

01:03:07 So that's what we should have been doing.

01:03:10 That's still the plan, state by state. 0.99

01:03:12 Let's abolish abortion. 0.97

01:03:13 That said though, Roe being overturned was still a blessing, still a blessing. Even if you're an 0.99

01:03:20 abolitionist, it's a blessing. You might be saying, well, it doesn't do anything. No,

01:03:23 it objectively does something. And at minimum, this is one of the things that it does.

01:03:28 It rips back that thin little veil over the pro-life industry that shows people,

01:03:33 shows the public that they were never about life. And that's a blessing. That's a blessing.

01:03:39 It is a blessing when God reveals the hypocrites.

01:03:45 And that's what we've been seeing for the last two years.

01:03:47 We've been seeing it in politics, all the neocons, your Liz Cheney's, your Mitt Romney's.

01:03:54 You're seeing it with the pro-life industry.

01:03:56 Oh, you never actually wanted to abolish abortion.

01:03:58 Oh, I see.

01:04:01 But sadly, we've been seeing it in our churches, with CRT, with the churches that closed down

01:04:08 for five months, open back up, but wouldn't do any singing, no singing allowed, had to wear a mask,

01:04:15 different sections. Those who have the vaccine can sit over here and those who don't can sit

01:04:23 over there. Oh, and then here comes Omicron and they shut it. Here's a rule of thumb. If your

01:04:27 church shut down twice leave your church if it's shut down again with omicron leave your church

01:04:38 but joel they have great nope leave your church they have good doctrine yeah they don't apply

01:04:42 they don't apply their doctrine it doesn't matter that they have good doctrine they're they're not 0.78

01:04:47 progressives they're not but they're not woke joel yeah but they're tyrants they're tyrants so

01:04:52 they're not woke, but here's the deal. You can be progressive. You can be a pietist.

01:04:59 Both churches need to be left. My whole point is this, in terms of division among elders, 0.98

01:05:06 that is possible. This is speculation, but possible at the village church, especially with

01:05:10 an elder team that large, and especially with the lay of the land over the last few years,

01:05:15 the last two in particular. My point is this, everyone has felt the division. How many of you

01:05:21 have left a church, right? Not, not just I'm a chronic church hopper and I go to, you know,

01:05:25 I've been going to different churches every three to six months for the last 20 years. Okay. If

01:05:29 that's you, you need to repent. That's wrong. That's wrong. I'm talking about the people who

01:05:34 I was a faithful member, Pastor Joel. I'm not a church hopper. I, I, I, I'm not overly critical

01:05:39 of Christ's bride. I love the church. And I was a faithful member in my church that I thought was

01:05:43 biblical with my pastor who I thought had a spine for 18 years. But then he was at BLM rallies 0.90

01:05:53 and our church was closed on Sunday. So I left. For you who's listening, who has that story,

01:06:03 good. You did the right thing. You definitely should have left. And whatever means you have

01:06:09 at your availability, you should be calling him out. Even after leaving the church, you should

01:06:14 be calling him to repentance, praying that God might bring him to shame. Shame is, there's a

01:06:21 grace of shame. There's a grace of shame. Paul even says, if anyone does not take account of

01:06:27 what I write in these letters, um, no longer, it says, um, uh, remove him from you that he might

01:06:33 be ashamed, but regard him as a brother. Meaning there is a way to use the grace of shame to bring

01:06:43 about people's repentance. So it's not inherently always 100% of the time wrong to shame people.

01:06:49 So shame that pastor. So my point is some of you guys, you left churches because crazy stuff

01:06:54 were happening, right? That's for the churchgoer. That's for the Christian, the member. I'm going

01:06:59 to give you the other side of the story as an elder, as a pastor, what pastors were experiencing

01:07:03 the last two years. These things went down, COVID, BLM, and then the Roe thing, Roe being

01:07:12 overturned. That's what I was going to say. Let me say this real quick. Roe's overturned. And a

01:07:17 lot of you guys, your pastor, he didn't say a word. Roe was overturned and your pastor, nothing.

01:07:26 that following Sunday, not a word, crickets. No, thank you, Lord, for your justice. And if anyone

01:07:36 in the church did thank the Lord and say, and we need to push for more, more justice, because this

01:07:42 is nothing compared to God's justice and what we need, we need abortion abolished. We need equal

01:07:48 protection. That means equal protection by having equal penalties, meaning that a mother who kills 1.00

01:07:55 her baby in the womb should have equal penalties under the law for any other homicide, any other

01:08:01 murder. Some of you guys said that and your pastor told you that you were being contentious.

01:08:06 Your pastor told you that you were being quarrelsome. Your pastor told you that you were in

01:08:10 sin. So not only did he not publicly say a word when Roe was overturned, thanking God for that 0.94

01:08:14 decision, but he actually, the only words that he did say were to you guys who were thanking God

01:08:20 for his justice on abortion

01:08:22 and saying that we need more of God's justice,

01:08:25 the word that he said was not to the world,

01:08:27 but to you telling you to be quiet.

01:08:31 That's your experience.

01:08:34 COVID tyranny, so civil tyranny, medical tyranny,

01:08:37 woke CRT, intersectionality,

01:08:38 and then spineless pastors who say nothing.

01:08:44 Guys who preached against abortion for years,

01:08:46 right, you thought you were in a conservative church,

01:08:48 preached against it for years,

01:08:49 then row action. It actually happens. There's more that needs to happen, but it actually happened.

01:08:54 A good start. And your pastor, not only did he not thank the Lord or say anything publicly to

01:09:00 celebrate that, but, but, but he told you to be quiet because you were celebrating that

01:09:04 and you left. Well, here's my deal. This is what I'm saying over the last two years at the elder

01:09:11 level, all these things that you've witnessed that you've been disappointed by from your pastors,

01:09:17 from your churches, your organizations, not everybody agreed. Let me say that again.

01:09:24 Lots of churches disappointed you. Your church may have disappointed you, but here's something

01:09:29 you should know. That doesn't guarantee. If your church took the wrong side on one of these issues,

01:09:38 it was faithless instead of faithful. Your church taking the wrong position doesn't mean that all

01:09:45 of the elders, all the leaders of that church wanted to take the wrong position.

01:09:52 Churches at the elder level, behind the scenes, behind closed doors, where you, Christian, you,

01:09:59 member, have not been privy to this information. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have known.

01:10:04 I'm not even saying this is right, but I'm just saying this is the reality.

01:10:09 There have been more church splits over the last two years. I'll say it that way. There have been

01:10:14 more church splits over the last two years than in the previous 10 or 20 years before that.

01:10:23 Why am I in Texas now and not in California anymore? Reason number one, I have children

01:10:28 and I love them. I don't like that. I'm a listener in California right now,

01:10:33 Joel, I can't believe you said. I don't know what to tell you.

01:10:39 Steve Day said it recently. He did a whole episode. It was fantastic.

01:10:42 it. He gave the exact number of all five states that were pivotal in turning the election for

01:10:52 Trump rather than Biden, all five states that ended up going blue, but were right on the edge,

01:10:57 that their electoral votes combined in those five states would have swung the election to where

01:11:01 Trump would be in office instead of Biden. And the votes that these states went blue by,

01:11:08 all five of them combined it was like 100 it was like 150 000 or something like that or it might

01:11:17 have been 500 000 i can't remember the exact number but it was less than a million and then

01:11:21 his whole point in the episode was six million people in california voted for trump six million

01:11:28 people, pardon my French, pissed in the wind, and if a fraction of them, like 10% or less

01:11:38 of them, had lived in these five states, and had gotten out of California, and voted conservatively,

01:11:46 13 service members wouldn't have died in Afghanistan, very likely.

01:11:52 like like like elections have consequences and and where you live matters we are in a cold

01:12:02 civil war it's heating up but we're in a cold civil war and and part of the polarization that's

01:12:08 happening in our nation is political it's cultural but it's also geographical and it needs to be

01:12:13 that's a good thing we are polarizing geographically and we need to be and you might

01:12:20 well, I'm a missionary to California, or I, you know, like California needs churches, or

01:12:24 I understand that. But California is a little bit different than North Korea.

01:12:29 You know why we send missionaries to China? Because a lot of people in China can't get out. 1.00

01:12:33 And you know what's happening, actually, as we've sent missionaries to all these places, 1.00

01:12:36 but we haven't actually raised our own children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. China's 0.74

01:12:41 now sending missionaries to us. You know how many kids from the boomer generation, 0.85

01:12:48 their kids grew up to be atheists and deny the faith like Abraham Piper

01:12:52 because they were laid on the altar of global missions, on the altar of being a missionary.

01:13:02 We're being missionaries, you know, and by living in this blue state or by doing this thing or by

01:13:07 doing that thing or, or giving our money to this or doing it. And so, yeah, we can't afford private

01:13:11 schooling because we're trying to be generous and we're living in this place that taxes us,

01:13:14 you know, uh, out to wazoo, you know? So yeah, but we, we put our kids in public school, but,

01:13:19 but we're doing a five minute devotional time as a family at night. And that that'll counteract,

01:13:23 uh, the 40 hours of, of, of public atheistic indoctrination that they receive every week for,

01:13:29 for the better part of 18 years. And then, and then 20 years later, you hear these parents crying

01:13:35 as, uh, you know, unconditional election, you know, the Lord just saves who he wants to save.

01:13:40 You know, I had nothing to do with our parenting. We raised our kid to know the Lord. I don't know

01:13:44 why they turned out to be an atheist. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. You don't want to admit it. 0.91

01:13:53 But you know why.

01:13:59 So yeah, the world is polarizing. And not just in terms of ideology, not just in terms of our

01:14:04 opinions, our views, our virtues, not just politically or culturally, but geographically.

01:14:09 So why did I leave California? Because I have kids and I love them. I want to raise them

01:14:13 the right way. And I have more resources and more freedoms and more ability to do that

01:14:17 in a state like Texas than I do in California. Secondly, because I want to build, not just

01:14:22 my household, my kids, but I want to build. And here's the deal. I don't want to go and plant

01:14:27 a garden in the Sahara Desert. Sure, I could maybe do some fancy agriculture and irrigation

01:14:36 and channeling some water and do this and do that. But I'd rather just go somewhere where

01:14:41 there's good soil and water. And why do triple aerial backflips to try to be fruitful in the

01:14:50 desert if you could go somewhere else that's not a desert? So I did that at the family level,

01:14:58 the Webbin household with my wife and my kids. I didn't want my wife to have to work outside of

01:15:02 our home anymore. My wife was having to work half time as an RN, as a nurse in California, 1.00

01:15:10 because the church didn't pay me enough to live.

01:15:14 And in California, San Diego, where we were,

01:15:18 it was just God awfully expensive.

01:15:20 So I did it for my wife.

01:15:22 I did it for my kids.

01:15:23 But also, it's not just our household.

01:15:26 I want to plant a church.

01:15:28 And I don't want to just plant a church.

01:15:29 I want to start a school.

01:15:32 I want to be able to help my son start businesses one day.

01:15:35 I want to start a publishing company.

01:15:37 I want the men in my church to seriously consider running for local office, city council. 0.97

01:15:44 There's a lot of things we want to do, and I'd like to not do it in the Sahara Desert.

01:15:48 I'd like to be able to plant all these trees, not just web and household trees, but covenant

01:15:52 Bible church trees and publishing company trees and right response trees and the classical

01:15:58 Christian school that we want to start trees and local politic trees.

01:16:02 I want to be able to plant all these trees somewhere where there's not just sand.

01:16:07 Like an actual dirt with water and a reasonable amount of sunlight.

01:16:14 So there was that reason.

01:16:16 But the last reason, the last reason is because me and my elders vehemently disagreed.

01:16:25 We were not aligned.

01:16:28 And that's not a unique, special one in a million story.

01:16:33 I can tell you story after story after story after story after story. Over the last two years,

01:16:40 I cannot tell you how many pastors have reached out to me about them and their fellow elders

01:16:48 being divided. Pastors did not agree on the COVID issue. And I'm not talking about pastors,

01:16:56 meaning John MacArthur and Tim Keller. I'm talking about pastors in the same church.

01:17:00 they did not agree about covid they did not agree about black lives matter they did not agree

01:17:10 over over how how political i mean just just even the big 30 000 foot view things

01:17:16 how much politics should be in the pulpit i believe that the statement jesus is lord

01:17:22 is the most politically profound statement

01:17:26 ever made in all the universe.

01:17:29 I believe that politics should be in the pulpit

01:17:31 because we believe in all of Christ for all of life.

01:17:35 I believe in the whole counsel of God

01:17:37 for the whole of human society.

01:17:39 I am not going to preach that Jesus is content

01:17:43 with a privatized lordship of your sweet little heart.

01:17:48 Jesus is Lord of Lords.

01:17:50 Jesus is king of kings.

01:17:53 He rules the nations with an iron scepter and every knee that will not bow will break

01:18:00 because Christ is going to receive the nations one way or another as his inheritance.

01:18:08 And he is ruling and reigning now, not waiting to come back and rule one day, but ruling

01:18:15 and reigning now.

01:18:16 And that is not an impotent, merely spiritual, ethereal, theoretical reign.

01:18:22 It is a tangible, earthly, physical, significant rule and reign in heaven and on earth.

01:18:30 All authority in heaven and on earth.

01:18:33 Which means when I preach, I preach not politics first and foremost, but I preach Bible.

01:18:39 I preach a text.

01:18:40 I say, this is the word of the Lord.

01:18:43 Thus saith the Lord.

01:18:45 Hosea chapter five, first Timothy chapter three, this is God's word. This is the meaning of faithful

01:18:52 exegesis and interpretation of God's word. And this lastly is the application of God's word.

01:19:01 Listen, if you are committed to expositional preaching, I have a text and here's the exegesis.

01:19:06 And then you sit down, you did not preach. That's not a sermon. That is an audible commentary.

01:19:12 everyone could have just stayed home that's an audible commentary it is not preaching it is not

01:19:19 a sermon a sermon is three parts revelation not i have a dream not i have an idea not i have a

01:19:24 church growth strategy i have a revelation the revelation is a text give me a text that's number

01:19:31 one number two interpretation this is the text and this is what god means by it this is the faithful

01:19:37 exegesis interpretation of the text. But the third part, application. If all you do is say,

01:19:44 here's a text, here's its meaning, commentary. Here's a text, here's its meaning, here's its

01:19:49 relevancy. Here's how it applies. And not just 17 points to be a better parent. It's not, we have

01:19:56 treated the word of God as though its only application was the home and the church, our

01:20:00 marriages, our parenting, and our church growth seminars for the last 50 years, and this is

01:20:07 precisely where it's gotten us. Stop that crap. We cannot afford to be so dumb, so naive. 0.99

01:20:17 Innocent as doves, yes, but shrewd as vipers. Innocence is not the same as naivety. We have 1.00

01:20:26 than naive. No, the Bible applies to everything. We don't just preach the same text every week.

01:20:33 We preach text by text by text, the whole Bible, expositional preaching, the whole counsel of God.

01:20:39 And we apply it not just to the same arenas in human society every week, marriage, parenting,

01:20:44 marriage, parenting, marriage, parenting. No, we apply it to culture, politics, academics, media,

01:20:51 arts science education everything free markets economics vocation everything

01:21:02 the word of god is sufficient the scripture says second timothy chapter three it is sufficient

01:21:09 it's god-breathed inerrant it's infallible and it's sufficient to make the man of god complete

01:21:15 for every good work, not just the good work of parenting, every good work. And it is infallible

01:21:23 and breathed out by God. It's sufficient for all of life and godliness. Life is a big, broad,

01:21:33 all-encompassing word. It's not just that scripture, some guys will say, oh, I believe

01:21:37 in the sufficiency of scripture. Okay, but here's the next question. For what? Sufficient for what?

01:21:42 Sufficient to get you to heaven.

01:21:44 Sufficient to be saved by grace alone, through faith alone, Christ alone.

01:21:47 Sufficient for salvation.

01:21:48 No, the Bible is most certainly sufficient for salvation and a whole lot more.

01:21:54 It's not merely sufficient for salvation.

01:21:57 The Bible is sufficient.

01:21:59 My Bible says what it's sufficient for.

01:22:02 The Bible says it's sufficient for life, not just salvation, life.

01:22:07 And not just eternal life.

01:22:08 Not just the life to come.

01:22:09 Not just the life then.

01:22:11 The life here.

01:22:11 the life now, life, all of it, every good work, good works in the home, good works in the church

01:22:19 and good works in the public square. So politics, yes. But my point is elders divided over this.

01:22:28 My elders divided over these things. We divided over tyranny. We didn't, we didn't agree on

01:22:35 tyranny. I said that Gavin Newsom was a tyrant. I had a couple of elders say, California's doing 0.83

01:22:42 a great job with COVID. I couldn't believe that, but that's what was said. That's a big disagreement.

01:22:49 That's a big disagreement. I remember when the panel went down, the infamous panel,

01:22:55 John MacArthur, you got Jay Mack, Phil Johnson, you got Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, and Al Mohler,

01:23:02 Shepherds Conference. I was there in person with my elders at that conference. And I remember the

01:23:08 sharp dispute between Phil Johnson and Albert Moeller. Phil Johnson asking some pointed questions.

01:23:16 Sure, maybe he could have worded him better, but it was not inherently immoral the way that he said

01:23:20 it. Not what he asked, not even how he asked it. It was not inherently immoral. Everybody could

01:23:25 say something better. Oh, I wouldn't have said it like that. Great. Great. Good for you. Okay.

01:23:30 but it was not inherently immoral the way that he worded these things and al moeller was irate

01:23:37 he was incredibly defensive why wouldn't you sign the statement on social justice in the gospel

01:23:43 well i just i i well i talk about this for for uh 15 minutes every day you know with a brief

01:23:50 it like no dude no we know why you didn't sign it right tell me well i i didn't like the way

01:23:56 things were worded. Okay, could you give me an example? One example, Phil Johnson asked. One

01:24:01 example. Tell me a thing that was worded a way that you didn't like it to be worded.

01:24:06 Well, I'm just not somebody who signs statements. No, no, no. It's not that you disagreed with the

01:24:12 wording. You didn't sign it because you've got guys at your seminary, Al, who would have lost

01:24:20 their minds if you signed this. That's why. Because you may not be woke, although I think

01:24:26 you might be, but you're definitely harboring some woke guys. And this has been documented.

01:24:32 John Harris has done a great job with this. This is well-documented. This is not speculation. This

01:24:37 is fact. But here's my point. A bunch of churches there for that panel, whole elder teams, local

01:24:43 churches with all their elders there, me there with my elders. And me and my elders had a sharp

01:24:49 dispute, again, over that. Not just a sharp dispute over Gavin Newsom, whether or not he's a tyrant,

01:24:53 but we had a sharp dispute over over whether or not

01:24:58 this whole woke thing going on with with al moeller was legitimate i remember arguing say i

01:25:06 know phil johnson didn't do anything wrong and having the elder phil johnson is a bulldog he's 0.99

01:25:11 phil johnson is a bully phil johnson is a jerk and then i'm listening to all the podcasts after 0.98

01:25:18 that right because everybody was giving their two cents of that panel and all the guys who say 0.99

01:25:22 phil johnson was in the wrong all those guys are woke now did you know that

01:25:26 and the guys who were saying no albert moeller's being overly defensive

01:25:31 this is weird something's fishy all those guys are the guys who have stood the test of time

01:25:36 have been faithful phil johnson was not in the wrong he wasn't but my point is all the way back

01:25:45 then with that it's fracturing and the reason why i'm sharing this it's not it's not oh you know

01:25:51 the world's smallest violin, woe is me. No, no. I'm sharing my experience to say this is multiple,

01:25:57 this was even pre-COVID. For multiple, what you have to realize, Christian, who is not a pastor,

01:26:03 for those of you who are not pastors, what you have to realize is from like 2015, 16, for sure

01:26:07 by 17, there have been massively polarized, it's what Voddie Bauckham wrote. If you haven't read

01:26:15 his book, Fault Lines, you need to read it. All these fault lines, right? We knew the old fault

01:26:19 lines. We played for, for, for 50 years, we played this, this national game of musical chairs with

01:26:27 churches where we're, we're all picking, you know, which chair we're going to sit in. Oh, I'm on this

01:26:33 side of the aisle. You're on that side of the aisle. And, and we're doing it over the old fault

01:26:37 lines. The old fault lines were things like, are you Presbyterian or are you Baptist? Do you baptize

01:26:42 believers only? Or, or are you, you know, pedo Baptist? Are you confessional or not? Sabbatarian 0.98

01:26:48 or not? You know, that's small fault line. Nobody ever really cared too much about that.

01:26:53 Here's another big one, even bigger than the Baptist Presbyterian thing, but are you Calvinist

01:26:58 or Arminian? That was a big one. Here's another one, cessationist or continuationist? Here's

01:27:03 another one, complementarian, which we realized that dog won't hunt. That doesn't hold water.

01:27:08 Complementarian wasn't enough. What we need is biblical patriarchy, which is where I've been for 0.92

01:27:12 the last few years. But at the time, I was complementarian. I thought that was the right

01:27:17 position. Yeah, I'm complementarian. Not realizing that the problem with complementarianism is it

01:27:22 puts the roles of men and women as though they were arbitrarily assigned by God. Like men and

01:27:27 women are really no different, but God just arbitrarily assigns a role of helpmate to woman

01:27:34 and assigns a role of protector and provider and leader and headship to men. Like God just assigned 0.56

01:27:40 the role of flying to birds, but it has nothing to do with their hollow bone structure and feathers

01:27:46 and wings, right? And God just assigned the role of swimming to fish as though it had no relationship

01:27:52 to the fact that they have scales and fins and gills. That's complementarianism. Complementarianism

01:27:58 indicts God as an arbitrary role assigner. It says God is arbitrary. Biblical patriarchy says,

01:28:05 no, we have different roles because we actually have different natures. Men were born to lead,

01:28:10 women aren't just not when we're born to nurture so biblical patriarch is the right thing but here's

01:28:14 the deal back in the day egalitarianism complementarianism egalitarianism do you

01:28:20 have male elders only or do you have some female elders do you let a female preach oh you don't

01:28:26 call her an elder but she's preaching underneath the authority of the elders i remember that one

01:28:29 that's still that card still gets played right but that that was another dividing line uh this

01:28:34 guy has women preaching all right he's on that side of the aisle i'm over here we're not on the

01:28:38 same team, right? We play this big game of musical chairs for, and it wasn't just we played the game

01:28:42 once and sat down 50 years. I'm saying for 50 years, continually throughout that time, we were

01:28:47 playing, and it's like, we all finally felt like we got in our seats. Okay, I know now, all right?

01:28:52 I'm Baptist, you're Presbyterian, Reformed, Arminian, Complementarian, egalitarian,

01:28:58 cessationist, continuationist, confessional, you know, not confessional, whatever. And everybody

01:29:03 sat down and then boom boom boom boom boom all these fault like these new fault lines we didn't

01:29:12 even know were there underneath the surface in the earth the tectonic plate started rumbling and

01:29:19 shaking with these new we thought that we were we were ready for the earthquake like we had already

01:29:24 sat down we put our seatbelts on we were good we knew like okay if an earthquake goes off you know

01:29:30 I'm going to be saying bye Arminian brothers and I'm good,

01:29:33 but I'm going to be over here with my Calvinist brothers on this side.

01:29:35 We're all buckled in and like,

01:29:36 but then I lost half of my Calvinist brothers too,

01:29:40 because there was another fault line in between us called CRT.

01:29:44 And then another one with,

01:29:46 with COVID tyranny.

01:29:49 And then another one just philosophically and doctrinally like,

01:29:52 how do you read Romans 13?

01:29:54 Do we all,

01:29:55 yes,

01:29:55 sir.

01:29:55 Caesar.

01:29:56 Yes,

01:29:56 sir.

01:29:56 Caesar.

01:29:56 Yes,

01:29:57 sir.

01:29:57 Caesar.

01:29:57 Or,

01:29:58 or actually is there Protestant resistance theory?

01:30:00 is rendered under Caesar, what is Caesar's?

01:30:04 Sure, and who decides what is Caesar's?

01:30:07 Does Caesar decide what is Caesar's?

01:30:09 What if Caesar says everything is Caesar's?

01:30:10 Because that's what Caesar tends to do.

01:30:13 Is there ever a point where we can say,

01:30:15 no, no, no, God has specifically said

01:30:16 this is not your Caesar.

01:30:17 No, no Caesar, bad Caesar, down Caesar.

01:30:21 Can we do that, right?

01:30:23 All these became the new fault lines.

01:30:25 That's what Vodhi wrote about in his book.

01:30:26 And from like 2015, 16, 17,

01:30:30 All the way up to Roe, that would be one of the last major of the new fault lines that went off.

01:30:36 It was CRT and intersectionality and all under the guise of racial reconciliation conference, racial reconciliation conference, a lament for social injustice.

01:30:46 And it's the whole social justice kind of thing that was coming in.

01:30:49 And then it's civil tyranny.

01:30:51 And then it's medical tyranny.

01:30:53 And then it's Roe being overturned.

01:30:56 And my pastor doesn't say a word, not a word.

01:30:58 and I say a word on social media

01:30:59 and he sends me a text

01:31:00 and tells me that I need to tone it down, right?

01:31:03 All these things start happening.

01:31:04 And what I'm saying is you saw that.

01:31:07 If you're not a pastor,

01:31:07 you saw that from the perspective of, 0.99

01:31:09 well, that really sucks. 0.97

01:31:11 I'm really disappointed. 0.97

01:31:12 Now I have to find a new church

01:31:13 and I can't find a new church.

01:31:14 All the churches went woke.

01:31:16 All the churches are COVID tyrants.

01:31:18 All the churches compromised.

01:31:19 Yeah, that's tough.

01:31:20 That's tough.

01:31:21 And I've been counseling a lot of you guys on that issue.

01:31:24 But what I'm saying is behind closed doors

01:31:27 at the elder experience, what you didn't see is that every single one of these local churches

01:31:34 was fighting an internal battle. You just saw which team of the elders won. And if the good

01:31:43 team won and you were a faithful Christian, then you stayed because the church was faithful.

01:31:46 If the good team lost and the bad team won and they went woke or they compromised or they became

01:31:51 tyrants and they shut down the church for seven months or whatever, then you were a faithful

01:31:54 christian you left what you didn't see is it is it the elders were duking it out not every elder

01:32:02 what was the churches that that stayed strong not all those elders were good guys

01:32:08 they stayed strong because because the guys the elders who were good guys they won the good guys

01:32:15 won and the bad guys lost and the churches that that took the wrong side they closed down forever

01:32:21 they were at BLM rallies, but they wouldn't open their church. It's not because there were

01:32:25 no faithful elders there. It could be, but there are cases where there were faithful elders,

01:32:29 but the faithful elders lost. They lost. The bad guys won. And what I'm saying is there are always

01:32:37 divisions and quarrels and disagreements with elders. It is a very polarizing, just the nature

01:32:45 of the work, leading a church in the scripture, it's theology. People have a lot of opinions

01:32:55 about theology. You know who really has a lot of opinions about theology? Pastors. Pastors have a

01:33:01 whole lot of opinions about theology. So what do you do when you have a plurality of pastors

01:33:05 with a plurality each of opinions about the scriptures? What you do is you have disagreements.

01:33:15 They have disagreements. But what if you do if you live in a unique historical moment

01:33:19 where some of these things are unprecedented, at least for our generation, and nobody really

01:33:27 knows where to stand or knows where to look to? We all say, well, John MacArthur, he stood his

01:33:32 ground. Well, okay, but my church in California also, I was in California at the time, we started

01:33:39 gathering again before John MacArthur. And my point is not to brag and say, we beat MacArthur.

01:33:43 my point is to say, we couldn't look to MacArthur. When we made the decision to gather,

01:33:47 we were going against what MacArthur was currently saying at that time. So we couldn't look to an

01:33:51 older man and say, we'll follow the faithfulness of MacArthur. MacArthur at that time was still

01:33:54 writing. He had just wrote an article talking about how the Ninth Circuit court was the highest

01:34:00 law in their land. And even though they knew it was a perverse court and that it was a pagan court

01:34:05 and that it had lots of unjust rulings about other things, they still ruled. And Romans 13 means we

01:34:10 submit to the highest ruler in the land, and the Ninth Circuit Court is the highest ruler. And so

01:34:17 even though we said we're going to meet on Sunday, we changed our minds, we canceled.

01:34:22 That was my example from John MacArthur that I had to go off of. Now, two weeks later, he wrote

01:34:27 Christ, not Caesar, the head of the church, which directly contradicted the article that he put out

01:34:32 two weeks before. And they did directly contradict. John MacArthur, it did not hold his ground the

01:34:39 whole time. He was wrong, and then became right. He was wrong, and verbally said he was wrong.

01:34:47 Well, he didn't say he was wrong admitting, but he said wrong things verbally, and then he changed

01:34:52 his opinion. But here's the deal. My point is, pastors already are opinionated. Pastors already

01:34:57 disagree. And then all of a sudden, you've got all these new fault lines, things that we had never

01:35:02 dealt with before, and we don't have other guys to look to. Because the other guys to look to,

01:35:07 like well here's the problem we did have other guys who looked to one of the reasons why me and

01:35:11 my elders disagreed on covid and our church reopening is because the elders who disagreed

01:35:16 with me i'm saying let's reopen you know who they were citing as their proof text for why we

01:35:21 shouldn't reopen macarthur because macarthur was saying that churches shouldn't open they should

01:35:29 submit to the law of the land and i was saying trying to say humbly and i'm sure i didn't do

01:35:36 it perfectly, but I was saying, I like MacArthur, but he's wrong. And you know who agreed with me

01:35:41 two weeks later about MacArthur being wrong? MacArthur. But my point is, it's been a divisive

01:35:51 time. And if you got all those things going on, it's like, well, Chandler's been getting woke.

01:35:55 Yeah, I agree. It's a problem. I left Acts 29 over it. So it's serious. I don't want to make

01:36:00 light of that i left a network that i liked that i had friends in over that there's a few other

01:36:06 things but that was the big one chandler's getting woke okay but here's the deal the village church

01:36:11 is massive there's a bunch of elders my point is i bet you there's some guys who who aren't on board

01:36:18 with the wokeness or again i said i tell you when i'm speculating this is speculation it's possible

01:36:24 maybe chandler's going unwoke maybe chandler has been having conversations with his elders saying

01:36:29 I don't think this was the right path. Maybe we need to, and maybe some of the elders say,

01:36:32 no, no, no, no, we're staying woke. My point is this. We don't know any of that. I don't know.

01:36:39 It's speculation. I'm not making any definitive claims, but I am saying this.

01:36:44 When you have extra biblical categories, you're either disqualified, aka you're fired,

01:36:50 or you're not disqualified,

01:36:52 a.k.a. take a week off

01:36:54 and then hop back to it, bro.

01:37:01 But you're not fired.

01:37:03 You're getting a paid vacation

01:37:04 for an indefinite period of time.

01:37:06 Something really serious happened

01:37:07 to the point where I'm in tears

01:37:08 and this is unbefitting of the pastor,

01:37:10 but it's not disqualifying.

01:37:13 That's an extra biblical category.

01:37:15 That's a third category. 0.74

01:37:16 You're either out or you're in.

01:37:18 Disqualified or qualified.

01:37:19 on. That's a third category. And my point is with that third category, that makes me wonder

01:37:25 what's going on. Was someone threatening to expose these things and have their Me Too moment with

01:37:31 some pagan news outlet and they wanted to get ahead of it? And that's why they got the third 0.69

01:37:35 party come in? Not just to investigate the DMs with Instagram, but to actually give them a PR

01:37:42 our plan for how to move forward. And the last thing I added with all the fault lines is that

01:37:49 the reason why I said all that to say, another piece of the puzzle is also, you just got to

01:37:53 keep in mind, elders disagree. And I know Chandler said, this is what the elders said,

01:37:58 and I agree with them. You know what I have said, I agree with my elders before,

01:38:06 when I absolutely did not agree with them.

01:38:11 Why did you do that, Joel?

01:38:14 Isn't that lying?

01:38:15 Yeah, it was a sin.

01:38:17 I should not have said that.

01:38:19 Why?

01:38:20 Why would you say you agree with your elders

01:38:22 when you don't agree with them?

01:38:26 Because I was afraid of my elders.

01:38:31 Because my elders were abusive

01:38:34 and manipulative.

01:38:36 because I thought my elders were conducting a mutiny against me.

01:38:45 Because I thought I was going to lose my job with a baby on the way.

01:38:52 My job that didn't pay me enough to begin with.

01:38:54 My job that there are reasons.

01:38:57 And I'm not saying they're valid reasons.

01:38:59 I'm not saying they're virtuous reasons.

01:39:00 I'm not saying that they are biblical reasons.

01:39:04 fear is sin dishonesty is sin my point though is to say there are moments it gets heated

01:39:15 at the elders table sometimes you know it gets heated you know that you've had disagreements

01:39:22 with family members with close friends with fellow church members over these last two years

01:39:25 about these new fault lines these issues you know it's polarizing you know it's divisive

01:39:30 and all i'm saying is this it's been divisive for elders on the same team too

01:39:34 and and and we have i think yet to see all the fallout that there's going to be and i'm not

01:39:41 talking about the village i'm talking about across the whole landscape mark my words for years

01:39:47 i'm not saying a century a hundred years but i think for the next five to ten years

01:39:53 we're going to see church after church after church split split split crumble crumble crumble

01:40:00 and i think a big part of it will be because of embracing things that don't please the lord

01:40:07 and therefore are not sustainable like woke ideology but also a lot of these splits will

01:40:12 because half of the elders embraced it and half of them didn't and you never knew you never knew

01:40:18 but but not everybody was on board one church was doing something that looked really good

01:40:23 but there were some bad guys on board that might eventually win and what happened and another

01:40:29 the church that you think was really bad, right? The lead pastor was woke. He's preaching woke.

01:40:34 A majority of the elders are woke, but some other guys weren't. And maybe eventually they grow and

01:40:39 get the upper hand. There's some stuff. There's some stuff behind the scenes. There's some stuff

01:40:49 in that elder's room, at that elder's table. We don't always agree.

01:40:53 and that doesn't mean that we're disqualified some of us are but it does mean that we're

01:41:02 we're sinners elders are sinners the qualification for eldership is not sinlessness

01:41:07 if the qualification for eldership is sinlessness then jesus is the only one who's qualified to be

01:41:12 an elder but the bible teaches that jesus although he is the chief shepherd first peter chapter five

01:41:17 he has under shepherds who hold the office of elder to help manage we don't own the sheep

01:41:23 They're his sheep, but we help as under-shepherds to manage his sheep.

01:41:28 And we do it as sheep ourselves.

01:41:31 As those, we are helping manage sinners as sinners ourselves for the only one who is

01:41:38 truly sinless.

01:41:40 An elder must be above reproach.

01:41:42 He must be the man of but one wife.

01:41:44 He must not be given to much wine.

01:41:46 An elder must be able to manage his household.

01:41:48 An elder has qualifications.

01:41:50 There are certain things that an elder may not do.

01:41:52 But that doesn't mean for him to be qualified, he doesn't commit these sins, that still doesn't

01:41:57 mean that he's sinless. And the last couple years has been, it's been hard to be a Christian.

01:42:06 And without sounding insensitive to those of you who are not pastors,

01:42:10 it's been hard to be a Christian. But I would argue it has been just as hard, if not harder,

01:42:16 to be a pastor. It's been really hard. You guys have lost friends. So have we. We've lost fellow

01:42:25 elders. We've lost close friendships. We've duked it out. Sometimes the good guys win. Sometimes

01:42:30 they don't. And sometimes the bad guys who lose look like the good guys because they lick their

01:42:40 finger and put it in the air and the wind starts to blow differently and starts to change. And then

01:42:43 they hop on the right rhetoric and nobody's the wiser. Nobody ever knows that they are actually

01:42:48 arguing for the exact opposite position. And they just take it to their grave. You just don't know.

01:42:55 That happens. And that may be happening at the village.

01:43:02 Someone's either trying to tank the village with some big public news story, me too, hashtag

01:43:09 moment, or there's something going on at the elders' table. It has to be one of those things.

01:43:19 Because otherwise, if the elders are united and no one's trying to take down the village,

01:43:24 I'll tell you one thing that I know. Being an elder, being a pastor for several years now,

01:43:29 one thing I know is you do not make a man go up behind the pulpit

01:43:35 who is emotionally unstable,

01:43:41 in tears, distraught, disturbed,

01:43:44 his own words, disoriented,

01:43:47 and grovel and apologize

01:43:53 with specificity,

01:43:55 not just before the church,

01:43:57 but publicly live-streamed to the world

01:44:01 for something that is

01:44:04 not disqualified.

01:44:09 Unless

01:44:10 your elders have a coup

01:44:12 or you're trying to make him grovel

01:44:16 in order to appease

01:44:19 the Me Too people

01:44:21 who are already threatening

01:44:22 to post something

01:44:23 if you didn't get to it first.

01:44:27 Some speculation?

01:44:29 Yeah.

01:44:29 but there's something going on because this is an extra biblical category. Disqualified,

01:44:36 no paid sabbatical, fired. Qualified, no indefinite sabbatical, take a week off,

01:44:45 we'll see you in a couple weeks. But the third category of not disqualified, not sexual,

01:44:51 not romantic, also indefinite, immediate leave of absence. I'm embarrassed.

01:45:00 I'm ashamed. I'm disoriented.

01:45:08 Something's fishy. Something's fishy. I think division with the elders or someone was threatening

01:45:16 with some me too thing to expose the church, expose something. Maybe neither, maybe something

01:45:23 else, but something, something. And it matters. It matters because they put it out for everybody

01:45:31 to see. It's fair game. It's public. We're allowed to talk about these things. And the reason why it

01:45:36 matters in terms of fruitfulness, being constructive for you, listener, the reason why it matters in

01:45:42 that regard is because you need to know, because some of you probably didn't know this until you're

01:45:47 hearing me say it. Some of you, it didn't sit right, but you didn't know how to word it. Now

01:45:51 you do. You need to know this is not a biblical response to sin when found in a pastor. This is

01:45:58 not how a church should respond to their pastor being in sin. The sin is either disqualifying

01:46:05 or it's not. If it's not disqualifying, that doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

01:46:09 That doesn't mean there's not something to do,

01:46:11 but the thing, the work to be done

01:46:13 with a non-disqualifying sin in a pastor

01:46:16 is work that is done that saves his dignity.

01:46:19 It's work that is done privately.

01:46:22 It's not dragging him and his family

01:46:25 and their reputation through the mud.

01:46:28 It's not a DEFCON 5 level, immediate, indefinite,

01:46:34 I'm gone, I'm disoriented, I'm in tears.

01:46:37 I, that's, that's not the way you handle stuff like this. It's not. So my prayer is that

01:46:45 it really wasn't sexual, that it really wasn't romantic, that they're being truthful about

01:46:51 those things, that there are no other women, that Chandler really has been a one woman man.

01:46:57 That's my prayer at that level, that it's not a bona fide moral failure.

01:47:01 I pray that it's not that

01:47:04 but it's something

01:47:07 and if it's not that

01:47:08 if it's not just

01:47:09 they're lying

01:47:10 and it's actually a lot worse

01:47:11 if it's not that scenario

01:47:14 that it's actually

01:47:14 just a lot worse

01:47:15 and they're not being truthful

01:47:16 then the only other scenarios

01:47:17 is some icky stuff

01:47:20 going on with the elder team

01:47:21 or

01:47:23 somebody threatening

01:47:25 to make all these DMs public

01:47:27 to shame Chandler

01:47:31 to shame the village

01:47:32 to try to take them down

01:47:34 and they had to get ahead of it.

01:47:39 And that's kind of

01:47:40 the world we live in.

01:47:41 I still don't think

01:47:41 that's the right approach.

01:47:43 I don't think

01:47:44 that's the right approach.

01:47:45 I think that's PR

01:47:46 and not necessarily repentance.

01:47:49 Could be,

01:47:50 but it doesn't look good.

01:47:52 That's not the right approach.

01:47:54 But that is the world

01:47:55 that we live in.

01:47:56 We are like sheep among wolves.

01:47:57 Jesus said that.

01:47:58 We live among ravenous wolves. 0.99

01:48:00 We live in a pagan culture. 1.00

01:48:01 that hates Christianity. Do you know why our culture hates men? 0.95

01:48:07 Because strong masculine headship relates to Christianity. Do you know why our culture hates

01:48:16 white people? Because the last 500 years, Christianity has mostly taken root in predominantly 0.98

01:48:24 Western white civilizations. That's changing now. Praise God. Christianity exploding in China and 0.81

01:48:32 Brazil and all over the world. But think about that. It's not arbitrary. Why the attack on 0.63

01:48:37 masculinity? Why the attack on colonizing and Western society and culture and whiteness? And

01:48:43 why the attack on the family? Why the attack on children, wanting trans children? Why the attack 0.97

01:48:49 on babies in the womb with abortion. All of it is just, it's the framework. It's all just the 0.72

01:48:56 fruit and different tenets of Christianity. Who's actually being attacked? What is the

01:49:03 common denominator across all of it? What does our world truly hate? Jesus. Jesus.

01:49:12 And they'll do anything they can. You can't make Jesus fall. He's impeccable.

01:49:18 Jesus is sinless. He's seated at the right hand of the Father. The world had its chance. They

01:49:23 crucified him, but he's resurrected and ascended and reigning. You can't do anything to Jesus,

01:49:28 but what you can do, if you can't take out Jesus, what you can do is you can smear and pervert and

01:49:35 twist and defile those who represent Jesus. And that's what Satan has always done ever since the

01:49:43 beginning. And that's what he's doing now. And it seems as though he's ramping things up

01:49:48 these last few years. And I hope by God's grace that he doesn't win. I hope that Chandler comes

01:49:54 out above reproach, not sinless, but above reproach. And I hope that the Lord uses this,

01:50:02 not only that he's proven above reproach in this area, but in the areas that he has not been above

01:50:07 reproach, namely being woke, that Chandler repents, that the Lord uses this to draw him

01:50:13 near to God. And my prayer is not that the village crumbles, but that the village thrives

01:50:20 out of this. And that anybody who may be threatening to do something that caused them

01:50:24 to respond in what I think is an extra biblical way with this situation, I hope that the Lord

01:50:31 in his mercy crushes that person or those people. That he would shut the mouth of lions who seek to

01:50:41 devour. I'm not a fan of Acts 29 anymore. You guys know that. I'm not a fan of Chandler. I'm

01:50:47 not a fan of the village, but I love them. I'm not a fan, but I love them. I want their best.

01:50:53 And if Chandler comes back and he's qualified, they told the truth and he repents of his

01:51:02 wokeness and he wants to start preaching the gospel, the actual gospel again, then I'm for

01:51:08 I'll forgive Chandler in a heartbeat. The Lord used him in my life immensely. I like that guy.

01:51:16 I don't want him to fail. I like that guy. I'm grateful to Matt Chandler. I am. I'm grateful

01:51:21 to Mark Driscoll too. I am. I know there were mistakes there, but the Lord used those guys

01:51:28 immensely and none of us should be rooting for their destruction. All right. Thanks for tuning

01:51:33 in. For those of you who came in late, you got to go back and watch the recording, not because it's

01:51:39 my best podcast, not because there's a whole lot of good information. Lord knows I went super duper

01:51:43 long. You need to go back and watch the recording for the first two minutes so that you can see

01:51:48 Franklin. I brought him on the camera. Franklin, little baby Joel Franklin. He was born just a few

01:51:53 days ago. All right. Thanks so much. We'll skip next Monday because it's Labor Day, but we'll

01:51:58 pick back up, Lord willing, the Monday after that. So I'll see you guys live with our Q&A

01:52:03 in about a week and a half. Today was not really a Q&A. It was just a Joel's thoughts on Chandler.

01:52:09 I will read the comments. I haven't got to look at them as we were going along,

01:52:12 but I'll read the comments. I know you guys will have points and you'll have questions.

01:52:16 And maybe I'll do a follow-up where I really engage your questions next time. So God bless,

01:52:23 and we'll see you again in the near future, Lord willing.

01:52:27 Thanks so much for listening.

01:52:28 But real quick, before you go,

01:52:30 do us a small favor, take a moment

01:52:32 and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show.

01:52:35 This is undoubtedly the best way

01:52:38 that you can help us get this biblically faithful content

01:52:41 to as many people as possible.

01:52:43 Thanks so much.

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The NXR Podcast - September 02, 2022

BONUS - Matt Chandler And The Danger Of Unbiblical Forms Of Church Discipline

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