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00:00:18.040Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries,
00:00:20.680and you're listening to another episode of our show called Theology Applied.
00:00:25.180In this episode, I was privileged to have as a special guest,
00:00:27.900Phil Johnson, the director of Grace to You. He's also a lay elder at Grace Community Church alongside Pastor John MacArthur in Southern California.
00:00:37.320Our topic for discussion was courage, the need for courage, and specifically the distinction between the spirit of this age and the spirit of God.
00:00:49.080These two entities, if you will, are directly compared and contrasted in the scripture very clearly.
00:00:56.400There is the spirit of this age on the one hand, and there is the spirit of God on the
00:01:44.400So we kind of went back and forth email talking about, well, what should we discuss?
00:01:48.560And what we landed on that I think would be really helpful for a lot of our listeners
00:01:52.120is a talk that you've done probably multiple times, I'm assuming.
00:01:56.100But the distinction, the direct comparing and contrasting between the spirit of this age and the spirit of God.
00:02:05.500So I'm going to let you go ahead and just set the framework for us.
00:02:08.200So the difference between the spirit of this age and the spirit of God.
00:02:12.820Yeah. In fact, this is a contrast the Apostle Paul makes in his epistle to the Corinthians, first epistle to the Corinthians, where he says,
00:02:20.000And now, we are not of the spirit of this world, but the spirit which is of God.
00:02:26.300And a large part of that epistle, and in fact, I would say a large part of the corpus of the Apostle Paul's writings,
00:02:34.720is admonishing people not to be trying to appease or reflect or parrot or mirror or make friends with the spirit of this age, the world.
00:02:48.000the world. James says the same thing. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. And the
00:02:54.020apostle John says the same thing. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
00:02:58.380So, this is a theme that runs through the New Testament. And even Jesus himself said,
00:03:03.660don't be surprised if the world hates you. And all of that sort of adds up to say, you know,
00:03:09.900we are not supposed to be seeking favor and approval and admiration from the world. We have
00:03:16.640a message to proclaim. And we should do it in a way that is kind and gentle and all of those
00:03:23.780things. But if the world hates us, that doesn't mean we've failed to deliver the message correctly,
00:03:29.500or even worse, that we need to adapt our message in order to make it more suitable
00:03:35.580to the ears of the world. Absolutely. One of the things that I always think of when we use the word
00:03:41.100world is it's helpful to understand that the New Testament authors use that word in
00:03:45.920multiple different facets, especially John. John uses the word world in at least four different
00:03:50.560ways, and you might have a couple others that you're aware of, but I always encourage our
00:03:55.020listeners that we love the cosmos. We love the world as it represents the created order, that
00:03:59.720nature is not a curse itself. It is under a curse because of sin, but we do love God's created world,
00:04:05.980the cosmos. We love people, the world, so much as it represents individual people created in the
00:04:12.180image of God, totally depraved, but God image bearing people, creatures. And so we love them,
00:04:18.520we want their best, but we despise the world insofar as it represents a demonic system
00:04:25.080underneath the authority of ultimately God is sovereign, even over Satan, but underneath the
00:04:31.240domain of Satan, where he actually takes people captive. That's one of the things I hear all the
00:04:35.640time. People quote Ephesians, our battle's not with flesh and blood, but principalities,
00:04:39.800spiritual powers. And that's true. But Paul says in his letter to Timothy, that Satan,
00:04:46.880who our battle is ultimately against, Satan takes people captive. So, we need to, with gentleness,
00:04:52.680rebuke our opponents, not knowing if God might grant them repentance. And after coming to the
00:04:56.860truth, after being held captive by Satan to do his will. So, we're battling with not flesh and
00:05:03.480blood, but with Satan. But Satan does enroll flesh and blood in his ranks underneath this demonic
00:05:09.360system. What do you think about that? Yeah, that's exactly right. The distinction you make
00:05:13.560is perfect. It's not the people of the world that we're not supposed to love. I mean, Scripture
00:05:18.660says God so loved the world that he gave his only son. It's talking about people in that context.
00:05:23.880Right. But when it says don't love the world, the context makes it equally clear that that's
00:05:28.900talking about the world system of which Satan is the ruler. Scripture refers to him as the
00:05:34.880the the god of this age and the ruler of this world so the it's talking about the domain of
00:05:42.420satan which is the system that that more or less rules this world the political the politics of
00:05:49.720this world the the the likes and dislikes of general society all of those are part of the
00:05:56.280world system that we're not supposed to fall in love with or imitate right so john in first john
00:06:02.380I remember I preached through 1 John and later turned it into a book that Justin Peters and Doris and Costi Hinn wrote the foreword for about really the whole book is just about the assurance of salvation.
00:06:15.640And as I was working through this word world and working about, you know, trying to work out a biblical definition of worldliness, I feel like John kind of boils it down to, you know, the three temptations that we see all the way back in the garden.
00:06:29.180It's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.
00:06:33.900I feel like those are the virtues, the screaming dogmas and values of the spirit of this age and that worldly system that is synonymous with a demonic system that stands opposed to God and his truth and his glory.
00:06:51.380And so it seems like, if I'm right about that, it seems like these things, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life would be indefinite, right?
00:07:00.740Whether we're all the way back with Babylon, or whether we're in the Roman Empire, or whether we're in America in 2022, it seems like these would be constants.
00:07:09.800And yet, even though those may be the underlining principles, it does seem as though each culture and each political system and each nation and each time period have maybe particular virtues and values that stand against God's truth that rise to the top.
00:07:28.560would you is this so my question is that is the spirit of this age it doesn't fluctuate is it is
00:07:34.380it can we say the spirit of this age in america is different than the spirit of the age in brazil
00:07:40.82050 years ago do you do you see what i'm asking yeah no it doesn't fluctuate and it doesn't change
00:07:46.800and i think that scripture is trying to be comprehensive there when it says the lust of
00:07:51.260the eyes lust of the flesh the pride of life you're right that goes all the way back to the
00:07:55.640garden, and even the language of scripture there says that Eve saw the fruit, that it was good for
00:08:00.300food, that it was pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desired to make one wise. So, it appeals to
00:08:06.640all three of those evil desires, her pride, that it was desired to make her wise, the lust of the
00:08:14.440flesh, it looked like good food, and the lust of the eyes, it was pleasant, you know, had a pleasant
00:08:20.140appearance. And it's the same three temptations that Satan tempted Christ with in the wilderness.
00:08:26.680That's right. The better Adam, the final Adam.
00:08:29.220Yeah. So, that really, I mean, the Apostle John actually says, all that is in the world is,
00:08:37.100and he gives those three categories. And notice, all three of them deal with illicit desires,
00:08:43.140lust of the flesh. That's a desire for something that cannot be righteously obtained, but it
00:08:48.760gratifies the flesh. Lust of the eyes, same thing. Desire for something that can't be
00:08:53.340righteously obtained, but it gratifies the eyes. And the pride of life is a desire for
00:09:00.380status and stature and the appraised and approval of men that can't be righteously obtained,
00:09:08.200and yet it pleases the ego. So, all three categories have to do with illicit desire,
00:09:14.680which I think is important. All sin begins with evil desire. And it's interesting that
00:09:21.960that is precisely what the Tenth Commandment forbids, coveting of any kind. Coveting by
00:09:27.980definition is a desire for something that you cannot righteously obtain. And that's important
00:09:34.080to know. It's what Jesus was saying when he said, if you so much as look on a woman to lust after
00:09:38.400her, you've already committed adultery in your heart. You've broken the law. You've broken the
00:09:42.860command of God merely by desiring something that you can't righteously have. And that's why I've
00:09:49.260been pretty steadfast against the idea that is being promoted among evangelicals today that it's
00:09:56.240okay to be same-sex attracted, to have a desire for, you know, a homosexual union. That's okay
00:10:02.440as long as you don't act on it. To me, that view pretty much goes exactly contrary to what Jesus
00:10:09.900was teaching when he said if you look on a woman to lust after her you've you've committed adultery
00:10:14.480already right yeah that because it's an it's an illicit desire it's a lust that cannot be
00:10:20.500righteously gratified right no you're absolutely right that gets into the the issue of concupiscence
00:10:25.780is that is that the right pronunciation of that word yeah it is if it's interesting you'd say that
00:10:30.640because a good friend of mine who's a pastor emailed me just two days ago and said how do
00:10:35.220pronounce this word? And I didn't know there was any option. I always thought it's concupiscence.
00:10:41.020But I asked a fellow pastor on staff of our church, how do you pronounce it? And he gave
00:10:45.700a totally different pronunciation. So I looked it up with the Oxford English Dictionary that
00:10:51.600pronounces words, and it is concupiscence. Okay, great. Great. There we go. We've got
00:10:56.980the authority on it. So yeah, but you're right with Revoice and Greg Johnson and some of those
00:11:02.100guys that this idea that I can, um, as long as I don't act on my desires and then you get, you know,
00:11:07.160some of the ridiculous, you know, perversion of, well, you can, you know, maybe you can act on them
00:11:12.520a little bit. You can cuddle with your, your guy that you're attracted to just as long as you don't
00:11:17.740go too far. And it's, and it's just, it's perversion. It's absolutely sin. And I, you know,
00:11:22.840I think with that, um, there, there are desires. So one thing that I would say, you said the
00:11:27.920deepest thing is our desires. And one thing that I've always said, and maybe you're welcome to
00:11:32.920push back on this, but I feel like there's actions at the top, right? So our actions often flow out
00:11:39.420of our feelings. Our feelings are influenced by our thought processes. Every idea, we take every
00:11:44.160thought captive. And that thought process is even deeper than just a thought that just pops into
00:11:48.600your head, but ideologies, ways of thinking, and then thoughts shaped by desires. But then desires
00:11:54.360are often shaped by, it seems like the core is our beliefs. And I think there are some, I think
00:11:59.380two things, at least one of two things can happen. We can have desires that are not inherently sinful
00:12:05.020in and of themselves, but we're seeking to gratify these desires in sinful ways rather than
00:12:12.940finding significance or value in God or satisfaction in God, pleasure and comfort in God. In his right
00:12:19.620hand. There are pleasures forevermore in his presence. There's fullness of joy. And so there's
00:12:24.540a way of going about desires that are, we could say maybe they're ordered desires, but we're
00:12:30.120seeking to fulfill them in sinful ways. But then there's a whole nother category of desires.
00:12:35.400The desire itself is inherently sinful. It is a misordered desire. So I think of Putin,
00:12:40.760just to be a little bit controversial. I think of Putin, I'm not a fan of him. I think he's a
00:12:45.080warlord, but at least he's a nationalist with all the globalism that we have these days. And God
00:12:50.800affirms the goodness of sovereign nations, the right to protect their borders, free trade,
00:12:55.020free markets, those kinds of things. And so I look at Putin and I see him as like a man who is
00:13:01.720sinning in what I would say, sinning in the right direction. I saw Trump as somebody with plenty of
00:13:06.560sin, but sinning in the right direction. But then there's a whole other group of men that seem to
00:13:11.120become very popular in our day and age that the men of empathy the men of that are effeminate and
00:13:17.140and and it seems like it's not only sin but it's sin in the wrong direction it's a misordered
00:13:23.500desire do you hear what i'm getting at do you have any thoughts on that yeah i think i understand
00:13:27.980what you mean i don't know that i'd call it sin in the right direction because any sin is taking
00:13:32.040you in the wrong direction obviously i know you know that but but the distinction you make is a
00:13:37.320legitimate one. Just think about the temptation of Jesus again. He'd fasted for 40 days and Satan
00:13:42.840wanted him to turn stones into bread. It is not sinful to desire bread. We pray, give us our daily
00:13:50.240bread, right? So, the sin in doing that would not have been that he's eating bread. The sin would
00:13:56.680have been that he's gratifying that desire in a wrong way. And that's true. A lot of our legitimate
00:14:05.800desires can become sin if they become idols or if we gratify them in the wrong way and all that.
00:14:13.780We all understand that. But then there are certain things that even to desire that thing
00:14:18.900is evil in and of itself. It's not a legitimate desire. And, of course, that applies to any kind
00:14:26.280of lust that involves fornication or sexual sin. It would apply to the covening of something that
00:14:34.920belongs to your neighbor, a whole host of things that just the desire itself would be evil. But
00:14:40.580it's also possible to let a good desire be fulfilled in a sinful way. And you see that
00:14:47.380in the temptation of Christ. Right. Yep. You're right. That's a great example. I, you know,
00:14:51.660I keep thinking as you speak of coveting, I keep thinking of Thomas Sowell that, you know,
00:14:55.600one of his famous quotes was, uh, once upon a time, you know, envy was one of the seven deadly
00:15:00.700sins. And now it goes by its new name, social justice, you know, but that's exactly right.
00:15:05.720The heart of covenant behind it is envying. And it's an indictment, an accusation of the living
00:15:11.660God, ultimately saying that God got it wrong, that God gave something to my neighbor that rightfully
00:15:16.620belongs to me, God. And I keep thinking of David, you know, where he says, the lines have fallen
00:15:22.400for me in pleasant places. It's one thing to salute the sovereignty of God in theory, but it's
00:15:27.720another to delight in what god has chosen to sovereignly provide in his providence is day that
00:15:33.540so so we can it's one thing to salute the attribute of sovereignty is another to actually
00:15:38.960delight in god's sovereignty by by having gratitude for what in his sovereignty he has chosen to do
00:15:45.700you know and and so yeah i think that's good um so with the spirit of this age so here here's one
00:15:53.280thing. I was in Acts 29 for a while and I left after Eric Mason wrote his book, Woke Church. So
00:15:59.620that was around towards the end of 2018. And I went the Reformed Baptist route, 1689, probably
00:16:04.720very similar to Votie Bauckham. I'd have a lot in common with the Apologia guys, Jeff Durbin,
00:16:09.480James White now is with them. And so that's where I landed. And I'm grateful for the ways that God
00:16:14.840has continued to lead me. And what I see as being biblical truth, what I believe is faithful to his
00:16:20.780word. But when I was in the process of leaving Acts 29, a lot of guys were leaving. A lot of guys
00:16:25.180were really getting sick of the woke stuff that was kind of happening in that context. And I
00:16:29.880remember that some of the guys who were holding down the fort and they were staying, they were
00:16:34.380accusing, and I found it ironic. And so I'm curious your take, but they were accusing the guys who
00:16:40.200were leaving, myself included, of buying into the spirit of this age. You're buying into the spirit
00:16:46.480And what they meant by, and I was so confused.
00:16:50.040And they said, you know, the spirit of this age, you know, loving Trump or wanting, you know, white fragility.
00:17:00.980Or they look at all the pushback from conservatives, some of them Christians, some of them just political conservatives, and they would say that's the spirit of the age.
00:17:11.620egalitarianism because i'm i'm thinking spirit of the age i'm thinking egalitarianism and draw
00:17:15.860androgyny um the social justice envy covetousness all you know effeminacy um but but they're like no
00:17:23.460the the the spirit of this age is everything that embodies conservatives and i was so confused
00:17:30.960how would you respond to that well i would say it can actually go both ways okay uh if you think
00:17:37.980about the secular political realm. I think obviously right now, at the moment in which we
00:17:46.520live, the American left is far more prone to actually give approval and encouragement to
00:17:53.700evil things, abortion and the whole LGBTQ agenda and all of that. But the American right has its
00:18:01.100own issues as well. And the secular political right is really not going to take a stand against
00:18:08.900LGBTQ agenda or any of that, at least not as a bloc. It's always been an issue for me. When I
00:18:17.420first became a Christian, I was just 17 years old. Up to that point, politics was my biggest interest.
00:18:24.180And I was a conservative in an era, this was 1960s and early 70s, in an era when it was not
00:18:30.840popular for students to be conservative. Even then, you know, to be cool, you kind of had to
00:18:36.920be a leftist and a radical. And it was not all that different from what it is today. Students
00:18:42.640rioting and the news media, you know, lending all its support to every leftist cause. And I was a
00:18:49.340conservative, but not saved and didn't know anything about the gospel, didn't understand it
00:18:55.420anyway. I'd grown up in a liberal church where, you know, some of the words of scripture were
00:19:00.880familiar to me, but I didn't know the gospel and stumbled across the gospel when I picked up my
00:19:06.380Bible at random one night to read. And it opened, you know, randomly to the, I just flopped it open.
00:19:12.720I treated my Bible like the, like a fortune cookie, you know, whatever my eyes would light
00:19:17.740on. I would try to get some kind of, you know, meaning out of the message and usually just a
00:19:23.300verse or two, but it opened to the first page of 1 Corinthians, and I thought, I've never read a
00:19:29.180whole book of Scripture. Maybe I will, and so I counted the pages, and it was more pages than I
00:19:35.800hoped, but I thought, well, I'll give it a try. I'm going to go, you know. By the time I got to
00:19:39.900chapter 3, it absolutely devastated my worldview, which up to that point was, I think God likes me
00:19:46.740because I'm conservative. I think God likes me because I'm interested in the more sophisticated
00:19:54.700things in this world. Whereas all my fellow students were out rioting and promoting leftist
00:20:02.040causes and rock music and drugs and all that. I was into classical music and conservative politics
00:20:08.640and all the nice things. And yet that whole first three or four chapters of 1 Corinthians
00:20:15.680are all about the wisdom of this world and how God hates it. You know, the wisdom of this world
00:20:22.040is foolishness with God, Paul says. And he says, if anyone among you who seems to be wise,
00:20:27.960let him become a fool that he may be wise. And God hates the wisdom of this world. He's chosen
00:20:33.460that which is foolish to confound the wise. He says it over and over and over. And I remember
00:20:38.660thinking that makes no no sense to me if if if god said he hated the foolishness of this world i
00:20:47.100would agree agree and understand perfectly but why would he say he hates the wisdom of this world and
00:20:54.500by the time i got through chapter three i realized the very best things about me are the things god
00:20:59.880hates and and and you know came out of those first three chapters realizing i needed to be saved i i
00:21:07.620had no hope before God. So, it was a good thing for me, but in my mind in those days, and still
00:21:13.960I think this is to a large degree true, when Scripture speaks of the wisdom of this world
00:21:20.160and the rulers of this world and all, it's talking about the political system that governs
00:21:25.120this world. And I think Christians today, a lot of Christians, actually have the false hope
00:21:32.160that salvation for our culture lies in politics that if we don't if we don't throw our collective
00:21:40.240weight together in a voting block and vote in a bunch of conservative legislators there's that's
00:21:46.820the only hope you know to save our society and the truth is that wouldn't save our society right
00:21:52.440because you must be born again that's yeah it's still the wisdom of this world and the very best
00:21:57.960you can do as a, you know, a worldly person without salvation is still filthy rags in God's
00:22:06.880eyes. And so, yeah, you know, back to your original question. Yeah, I would say the dominant
00:22:16.940spirit of the age today is a sort of left-leaning postmodern notion that you can't really know
00:22:26.060anything for sure. You know, that's what dominates the world. And that is the spirit of the age
00:22:31.660today. And it's radically different from the spirit of God, which starts with the things you
00:22:38.660can absolutely know, because it's truth revealed by God, and that's scripture. So, our worldview
00:22:43.360starts with scripture. You made reference earlier to the fact that Satan holds people captive. And
00:22:50.600The way Paul describes the warfare that we are called to wage is in 1 Corinthians 10, he says, you know, the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly.
00:23:04.280And he's not only talking there about, you know, military hardware, he's talking about fleshly ideas, worldly politics, all those things.
00:23:14.060That's not going to solve it. But the weapons of our warfare are spiritual and powerful for the tearing down of the strongholds that Satan has people held captive in.
00:23:24.400He's talking about biblical truth there. And that's this is the spiritual war.
00:23:30.060It's not a it's not like a lot of charismatics think a mystical war against demons for, you know, real estate territory.
00:23:38.900Right. It's it's a war against the powers of evil over the truth.
00:23:43.020And the weapon that we have, the primary weapon, the only offensive weapon that's listed in that that array of armor in Ephesians six is the word of God truth.
00:23:54.640And so if we're going to fight the devil and liberate people from the strongholds he holds them in, it's the truth of the word that will do it.
00:24:03.240It's not political clout. It's not, you know, human warfare.
00:24:09.420It's not, you know, sarcasm on Twitter, although some of us have dipped into that.
00:24:18.020But what actually has power to make a difference in our culture is the truth of God's word.
00:24:24.540And we have to proclaim that. And it goes absolutely contrary to the spirit of the age, which, like I said, right now, the spirit of the age is postmodern.
00:24:32.660And the hallmark of postmodernity is the notion that nobody really knows anything for sure.
00:24:40.700There may be objective truth out there.
00:24:42.880There may be truth that's, you know, ultimate truth, but we can't know it for sure.
00:24:59.060I'm not making an objective statement about that.
00:25:01.340Most people who are informed postmodernists wouldn't say that objective truth doesn't exist because they don't know enough to say that. So they'll say, if it exists, we can't know it for sure, which is in practical terms, the same thing.
00:25:17.320It is to say, nobody has truth, and therefore, your opinion is as good as mine and vice versa, and nobody should ever tell another person that they're wrong, because you don't know any more than they do whether what they believe is right or wrong.
00:25:33.320That is the spirit that dominates the world today, and it's hostile to the very idea of truth, and especially hostile to the very idea of revealed truth, where God has told us this is true, and that's how we know it.
00:25:46.700right and a lot of that's that's like the foundation of christianity yep amen yeah so a
00:25:52.020lot of that plays into you know some relativism but a lot of that plays into some of the the
00:25:56.740things that we've been facing as of late like you know standpoint epistemology or as votie
00:26:01.500bacham calls it you know the ethnic gnosticism you know this idea that everybody has different
00:26:06.640lived experiences and and so you can't know these things unless you've gone through certain
00:26:12.040experiences. And so then even, you know, that taking that and trying to impose that godless
00:26:18.160ideology within the Christian faith and upon the Bible as a hermeneutic saying that, you know,
00:26:23.840like instead of a Hebrew and Greek scholars, we need, you know, a black guy and we need an Asian
00:26:28.520woman and we need, you know, and, you know, to tell us what the Bible means. And of course we're
00:26:33.920in a world of hurt very quickly. So one of the big characteristics that you drew was one of the
00:26:41.940big contrast was all right spirit of this age uh relativism it's this uncertainty uh but an
00:26:47.780area ironically it is an arrogant uncertainty you would think that uncertainty would make you humble
00:26:52.340but it doesn't because the most humble thing you can do is say god wrote a book and i submit my
00:26:58.900life to it go ahead sorry well there's nothing more arrogant than uncertainty and that's what
00:27:04.560paul is saying in romans 1 when he said look that which may be known about god is is manifest in
00:27:10.420him. God has built into the human mind and the human soul an innate knowledge that he exists,
00:27:17.180and the only way to be a skeptic is to suppress that knowledge, and it's an arrogant thing to do
00:27:25.720because you're suppressing knowledge of God that came from God and saying, no, I know better.
00:27:33.440I know better. So, it's inherently arrogant, and it manifests. It's no surprise that it manifests
00:32:42.620And I can say that from the other side, as what I would say is a bad example, and the
00:32:47.160Lord has been merciful despite my failure.
00:32:49.400But I started off as a vineyard church planter, then moved to Acts 29.
00:32:54.800The vineyard was egalitarian, and I believe it still is.
00:32:57.460I don't really follow much, but the gifts of the Spirit, you know, and so I walked into
00:33:02.640all these things, cessationism, complementarianism, which even that now I would describe myself
00:33:09.520as somebody who's patriarchal, because I think even complementarianism in many cases, or at least
00:33:14.660would take a long time to explain what I mean when I say complementarian. I don't think it's just
00:33:19.340role, but I think it's not just male and female roles he assigned them, but male and female
00:33:23.060natures he designed them, that the difference between men and women goes all the way down.
00:33:27.000And so, you know, but all these things I came into later, cessationism, complementarianism,
00:33:31.460Calvinism. And so I did change my mind. And I would say that it hurts the church.
00:33:39.080Every time we shifted, the Lord honored that because it was, you know, change in the right direction is what the Bible would call repentance.
00:33:48.060You know, so I was repenting, but it wasn't ideal.
00:33:53.380You know, Lord willing, you know, you would have come to that ahead of time.
00:33:58.300And I should clarify, because I don't mean that I think it's wrong to change your mind.
00:34:02.180I've changed my mind on a number of things.
00:34:03.920I just think it's remarkable that Spurgeon never did that because he didn't put anything in print or on the record until he had thoroughly studied it.
00:34:12.240I think all of us would look back on our lives and say, oh, it would have been better if I'd done that.
00:34:41.200I think that that's admirable, and it just goes to the point of, yeah, this whole idea
00:34:46.840of uncertainty being synonymous with humility is a sham.
00:34:50.440It does make me think a little bit of, one of my friends is Jared Longshore, and I know
00:34:55.440that he, you know, that he disappointed a lot of Baptists with the transition that he made.
00:34:59.700But I remember, you know, one tweet that went out there was basically kind of demonizing the change inherently.
00:35:07.540And I don't know this man's thoughts and those kinds of things.
00:35:10.000And you may know what I'm talking about, but I won't be any more specific than that.
00:35:13.800But the point was, you know, we shouldn't applaud somebody changing, you know, in their doctrine.
00:35:18.480To me, I would just want to say, because I am a Baptist, but I want to say as a Baptist,
00:35:22.640I don't applaud you because you've now embraced a position that is not biblical. That's why I don't
00:35:28.840applaud you. That's why this isn't praiseworthy, because I think that that's an unbiblical
00:35:33.340position. And I think that it's still within the banner of orthodoxy. You're still a brother in
00:35:37.340Christ. We wish you well. We love you, all these kinds of things. But you would better serve the
00:35:41.240people of God by holding to things that, of course, I believe as a Baptist are biblical. But what I
00:35:46.600don't want to do is just take change itself and and somehow demonize change because if any
00:35:53.760presbyterian became a baptist i would be applauding that change and so it's not change is not the
00:35:59.520problem the question is are we changing or conforming more into the image of christ or
00:36:05.000further away are we being renewed by the transforming transforming is a change is our
00:36:09.860mind being transformed more into christ likeness and sound biblical doctrine or which are we changing
00:36:16.420for the better or the worse so yeah agreed and change is only a problem uh if you start to think
00:36:22.940of change itself as a virtue i have a friend i had a friend uh he really no longer is in touch
00:36:29.540with me but uh he he would make these uh major worldview changes an entire paradigm shift every
00:36:37.940three or four years and he went from being a um arminian to a calvinist to a hyper calvinist
00:36:46.400to a very soft Calvinist to an ecumenist to an eastern orthodox wow you know and he's made all
00:36:54.380of those changes maybe you know with with as little sometimes as two years in between and
00:37:03.820he wrote an article after one of his major changes saying this very thing that he believes
00:37:10.120changing your mind is the very essence of humility that was like the title of his article
00:37:14.720Yeah, I challenged him on that. And, you know, he basically doubled down and he he believed that I think there are people who are afflicted with a sort of wanderlust when it comes to theological positions where they they they change all the time.
00:37:32.980And my my advice to people like that is if you're going to do it, just don't don't think that that's humility, especially if and as it usually happens, the guy who comes to a fresh position then spends the next year excoriating everybody who believes what he believed last year.
00:37:50.740Like, all of a sudden now, you know, he goes from pre-millennialism to post-millennialism, and within days, he's an expert on eschatology, and he wants to debate everybody.
00:38:03.060That sort of thing really irritates me, you know, no matter which direction you're changing.
00:38:08.140If you just changed your position, you don't need to go around picking fights with everybody.
00:38:12.420It seems like the sort of people who are afflicted with the problem we're talking about, that's what they always do.
00:38:20.740they, it's almost as if they love the argument more than they love the truth.
00:38:50.020Right. Remember, scripture says, be steadfast, immovable.
00:38:54.600So there is a sense in which steadfastness is virtuous, you know, unless you're being stubborn about something you're wrong in.
00:39:04.340So it is kind of hard to pin down, isn't it?
00:39:07.600There are people I'd love to see change their opinions, but yeah, if they do, I don't want them crowing about how humble they are because they changed.
00:39:18.300So, any other thoughts on spirit of this age, spirit of God?
00:39:21.780The big one that it seems like we've been hitting is relativism versus steadfast, unmovable, unshakable, absolute truth.
00:39:28.600Yeah, and I would say there's also an important distinction to be made between worldliness and heavenly mindedness.
00:39:35.000Scripture commands us to set our affections on things that are above.
00:39:40.160And yet that viewpoint is scorned by most evangelicals today who will tell you if you're heavenly minded at all, then you're no earthly good.
00:39:52.980But Scripture commands us to set our affections on things above.
00:39:56.240And I find that if there's a besetting sin that evangelicals have shown for the past 50 years, it's this tendency to adopt and embrace and adapt pretty much everything that's a worldly fad.
00:40:14.200Whatever's popular in the world right now is going to be popular soon in the church.
00:40:21.480And so it's kind of embarrassing, but they do it.
00:40:24.560I mean, you go to any kind of large Christian gathering, the national religious broadcasters or used to be Christian booksellers were the worst.
00:40:32.800And I've been to their convention in a while, so I don't know if it's still quite this bad.
00:40:36.480But you'd have you'd have displays of people who would take every every logo from a secular company, every pop tune from popular music or whatever, and try to change it in a way that it had some kind of Christian message.
00:40:55.220It's just it's cheesy and it's laughable in the eyes of the world.
00:40:59.740It doesn't win the world's admiration, but the opposite.
00:41:02.360It makes makes the world think that we are shallow.
00:41:06.080and it is a shallow approach. It's interesting. I was just listening this morning to, I don't want
00:41:12.100to give a commercial for another podcast, but I have to say the Just Thinking podcast, those guys,
00:41:17.820they do these long form podcasts. I think their most recent one is like three hours long. And in
00:41:24.020the first hour, they're talking about this very thing, how, and Daryl Harrison is eloquent with
00:41:29.820it, talking about how sad it is that Christians are addicted to borrowing fads from the world.
00:41:38.320He's much more eloquent than I am about it.
00:41:40.340So, just encourage you to have them listen to that.
00:44:58.920You don't see the word diversity in Scripture.
00:45:01.760There are principles associated with the idea of diversity that we learn from Scripture.
00:45:07.460I mean, God made the human race to be diverse, and all of that is good.
00:45:13.640But diversity itself is not a particular virtue in the sense that, you know, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.
00:45:27.360These are what Scripture calls virtue, and they don't really go with any of the postmodern values, which are inclusion, diversity, and epistemological humility.
00:45:40.780And those things sort of blend together to say, you just cannot challenge anyone else's view.
00:45:47.140That other guy's opinion is every bit as good and valid as mine.
00:45:51.540And therefore, I'm not supposed to tell anybody they're wrong.
00:46:01.880And that's why I started experiencing problems with some of the local other actual pastors in my area was because these things were popping up.
00:46:09.620and the critical race theory thing was popping up.
00:46:11.480And of course, it's always under the banner
00:52:46.160So, so we just plan to continue doing that for us at Grace To You. It's, as I said, I hope to see it two generations, at least after I'm dead.
00:52:56.600Yeah, that's great. So with Grace To You being completely separate, because I, you know, it was helpful just corresponding with you through email, because I just imagine, I don't know, I just, I don't know what I imagine, but I just imagine, you know, Grace To You and Grace Community being maybe closer tied than they are.
00:53:11.640And I know they are tied with John MacArthur, but so all that being said, my point is whenever John MacArthur, Lord, does take him home, would Grace to You have to stay in that location?
00:53:23.240Do you think there's any, is there any talk or any potential Grace to You one day down the line 10 years from now being maybe?
00:53:43.300Grace to you has always been self-supporting.
00:53:44.940We don't depend on income from the church.
00:53:48.480And so we could conceivably move to any place in the world that we wanted to.
00:53:55.680And there may be someday tax benefits in doing that and cost of living benefits to do it.
00:54:02.980We don't have a plan to do it, but we have discussed the possibility.
00:54:06.340As long as John's here, though, we want to stay close to Grace Church.
00:54:09.280one of the requirements to be employed at grace to you is you have to be a
00:54:12.600grace church member. Okay. So, so we can't,
00:54:16.480we don't want to move away from the church as long as John's there at least.
00:54:21.500Right. And you're an elder at the church, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay.
00:54:27.040Well, I'll, I'll stop. I'll stop trying to get older. What? Yeah. It's,
00:54:31.460it's confusing to people because I pastor an adult fellowship group,
00:54:35.200a Sunday school class, but I'm technically a lay elder.
00:54:38.420I don't get paid by the church, so I'm a layman who serves as an elder, and I haven't been necessarily the most diligent of all the elders, but I do teach a fairly large fellowship group that meets every Sunday.
00:54:56.580Great. All right, well, I'll stop picking your brain about that, but I appreciate you opening up and sharing a little bit about the future of grace.
00:55:03.600Thanks so much for coming on the show. Is there any final thoughts you want to leave us with?
00:55:08.420No, thanks for having me. Just to say, people have asked a lot, it seems, lately. What do you think the crying need for evangelical Christians today is? And my answer consistently has been courage. I think courage. I just spoke on it at Shepherds Conference.
00:55:26.340They assigned me a passage from Joshua chapter one, where in the span of four verses, Joshua is told by God three times, be strong and courageous.
00:55:37.760And I think courage is one of the things that is lacking among ministers today.
00:55:42.520Pastors, they are too afraid of what the world thinks and too afraid to go against what's politically correct.
00:55:51.360And let's face it, these days, you can pay a very high price just for expressing the wrong opinion.