The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Spirit Of The Age vs. The Spirit Of God

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, real quick, before we get started, I have a small request.

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00:00:18.040 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries,

00:00:20.680 and you're listening to another episode of our show called Theology Applied.

00:00:25.180 In this episode, I was privileged to have as a special guest,

00:00:27.900 Phil Johnson, the director of Grace to You. He's also a lay elder at Grace Community Church alongside Pastor John MacArthur in Southern California.

00:00:37.320 Our topic for discussion was courage, the need for courage, and specifically the distinction between the spirit of this age and the spirit of God.

00:00:49.080 These two entities, if you will, are directly compared and contrasted in the scripture very clearly.

00:00:56.400 There is the spirit of this age on the one hand, and there is the spirit of God on the

00:01:02.660 other.

00:01:03.200 Understanding the distinction and having the ability to discern between the two in our

00:01:08.720 crazy world and our crazy time is of the utmost importance.

00:01:13.140 You'll enjoy this episode of Theology Applied as we discuss these important things.

00:01:17.760 Thanks for tuning in.

00:01:19.340 Applying God's word to every aspect of life.

00:01:22.600 This is Theology Applied.

00:01:26.400 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:01:32.400 I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries.

00:01:35.300 And today I am privileged to have as a special guest, Phil Johnson from Grace to You.

00:01:40.840 Phil, thanks for coming on the show.

00:01:42.160 Hey, thanks for having me.

00:01:43.320 Absolutely.

00:01:44.400 So we kind of went back and forth email talking about, well, what should we discuss?

00:01:48.560 And what we landed on that I think would be really helpful for a lot of our listeners

00:01:52.120 is a talk that you've done probably multiple times, I'm assuming.

00:01:56.100 But the distinction, the direct comparing and contrasting between the spirit of this age and the spirit of God.

00:02:05.500 So I'm going to let you go ahead and just set the framework for us.

00:02:08.200 So the difference between the spirit of this age and the spirit of God.

00:02:12.820 Yeah. In fact, this is a contrast the Apostle Paul makes in his epistle to the Corinthians, first epistle to the Corinthians, where he says,

00:02:20.000 And now, we are not of the spirit of this world, but the spirit which is of God.

00:02:26.300 And a large part of that epistle, and in fact, I would say a large part of the corpus of the Apostle Paul's writings,

00:02:34.720 is 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.

00:02:48.000 the world. James says the same thing. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. And the

00:02:54.020 apostle John says the same thing. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

00:02:58.380 So, this is a theme that runs through the New Testament. And even Jesus himself said,

00:03:03.660 don't be surprised if the world hates you. And all of that sort of adds up to say, you know,

00:03:09.900 we are not supposed to be seeking favor and approval and admiration from the world. We have

00:03:16.640 a message to proclaim. And we should do it in a way that is kind and gentle and all of those

00:03:23.780 things. But if the world hates us, that doesn't mean we've failed to deliver the message correctly,

00:03:29.500 or even worse, that we need to adapt our message in order to make it more suitable

00:03:35.580 to the ears of the world. Absolutely. One of the things that I always think of when we use the word

00:03:41.100 world is it's helpful to understand that the New Testament authors use that word in

00:03:45.920 multiple different facets, especially John. John uses the word world in at least four different

00:03:50.560 ways, and you might have a couple others that you're aware of, but I always encourage our

00:03:55.020 listeners that we love the cosmos. We love the world as it represents the created order, that

00:03:59.720 nature is not a curse itself. It is under a curse because of sin, but we do love God's created world,

00:04:05.980 the cosmos. We love people, the world, so much as it represents individual people created in the

00:04:12.180 image of God, totally depraved, but God image bearing people, creatures. And so we love them,

00:04:18.520 we want their best, but we despise the world insofar as it represents a demonic system

00:04:25.080 underneath the authority of ultimately God is sovereign, even over Satan, but underneath the

00:04:31.240 domain of Satan, where he actually takes people captive. That's one of the things I hear all the

00:04:35.640 time. People quote Ephesians, our battle's not with flesh and blood, but principalities,

00:04:39.800 spiritual powers. And that's true. But Paul says in his letter to Timothy, that Satan,

00:04:46.880 who our battle is ultimately against, Satan takes people captive. So, we need to, with gentleness,

00:04:52.680 rebuke our opponents, not knowing if God might grant them repentance. And after coming to the

00:04:56.860 truth, after being held captive by Satan to do his will. So, we're battling with not flesh and

00:05:03.480 blood, but with Satan. But Satan does enroll flesh and blood in his ranks underneath this demonic

00:05:09.360 system. What do you think about that? Yeah, that's exactly right. The distinction you make

00:05:13.560 is perfect. It's not the people of the world that we're not supposed to love. I mean, Scripture

00:05:18.660 says God so loved the world that he gave his only son. It's talking about people in that context.

00:05:23.880 Right. But when it says don't love the world, the context makes it equally clear that that's

00:05:28.900 talking about the world system of which Satan is the ruler. Scripture refers to him as the

00:05:34.880 the the god of this age and the ruler of this world so the it's talking about the domain of

00:05:42.420 satan which is the system that that more or less rules this world the political the politics of

00:05:49.720 this world the the the likes and dislikes of general society all of those are part of the

00:05:56.280 world system that we're not supposed to fall in love with or imitate right so john in first john

00:06:02.380 I 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.

00:06:14.000 It's called Am I Truly Saved?

00:06:15.640 And 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.

00:06:29.180 It's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.

00:06:33.900 I 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.

00:06:51.380 And 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?

00:07:00.740 Whether 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.

00:07:09.800 And 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.

00:07:28.560 would you is this so my question is that is the spirit of this age it doesn't fluctuate is it is

00:07:34.380 it can we say the spirit of this age in america is different than the spirit of the age in brazil

00:07:40.820 50 years ago do you do you see what i'm asking yeah no it doesn't fluctuate and it doesn't change

00:07:46.800 and i think that scripture is trying to be comprehensive there when it says the lust of

00:07:51.260 the eyes lust of the flesh the pride of life you're right that goes all the way back to the

00:07:55.640 garden, and even the language of scripture there says that Eve saw the fruit, that it was good for

00:08:00.300 food, that it was pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desired to make one wise. So, it appeals to

00:08:06.640 all three of those evil desires, her pride, that it was desired to make her wise, the lust of the

00:08:14.440 flesh, it looked like good food, and the lust of the eyes, it was pleasant, you know, had a pleasant

00:08:20.140 appearance. And it's the same three temptations that Satan tempted Christ with in the wilderness.

00:08:26.680 That's right. The better Adam, the final Adam. 0.80

00:08:29.220 Yeah. So, that really, I mean, the Apostle John actually says, all that is in the world is,

00:08:37.100 and he gives those three categories. And notice, all three of them deal with illicit desires,

00:08:43.140 lust of the flesh. That's a desire for something that cannot be righteously obtained, but it

00:08:48.760 gratifies the flesh. Lust of the eyes, same thing. Desire for something that can't be

00:08:53.340 righteously obtained, but it gratifies the eyes. And the pride of life is a desire for

00:09:00.380 status and stature and the appraised and approval of men that can't be righteously obtained,

00:09:08.200 and yet it pleases the ego. So, all three categories have to do with illicit desire,

00:09:14.680 which I think is important. All sin begins with evil desire. And it's interesting that

00:09:21.960 that is precisely what the Tenth Commandment forbids, coveting of any kind. Coveting by

00:09:27.980 definition is a desire for something that you cannot righteously obtain. And that's important

00:09:34.080 to know. It's what Jesus was saying when he said, if you so much as look on a woman to lust after

00:09:38.400 her, you've already committed adultery in your heart. You've broken the law. You've broken the

00:09:42.860 command of God merely by desiring something that you can't righteously have. And that's why I've

00:09:49.260 been pretty steadfast against the idea that is being promoted among evangelicals today that it's

00:09:56.240 okay to be same-sex attracted, to have a desire for, you know, a homosexual union. That's okay 0.99

00:10:02.440 as long as you don't act on it. To me, that view pretty much goes exactly contrary to what Jesus

00:10:09.900 was teaching when he said if you look on a woman to lust after her you've you've committed adultery

00:10:14.480 already right yeah that because it's an it's an illicit desire it's a lust that cannot be

00:10:20.500 righteously gratified right no you're absolutely right that gets into the the issue of concupiscence

00:10:25.780 is that is that the right pronunciation of that word yeah it is if it's interesting you'd say that

00:10:30.640 because a good friend of mine who's a pastor emailed me just two days ago and said how do

00:10:35.220 pronounce this word? And I didn't know there was any option. I always thought it's concupiscence.

00:10:41.020 But I asked a fellow pastor on staff of our church, how do you pronounce it? And he gave

00:10:45.700 a totally different pronunciation. So I looked it up with the Oxford English Dictionary that

00:10:51.600 pronounces words, and it is concupiscence. Okay, great. Great. There we go. We've got

00:10:56.980 the authority on it. So yeah, but you're right with Revoice and Greg Johnson and some of those

00:11:02.100 guys that this idea that I can, um, as long as I don't act on my desires and then you get, you know,

00:11:07.160 some of the ridiculous, you know, perversion of, well, you can, you know, maybe you can act on them

00:11:12.520 a little bit. You can cuddle with your, your guy that you're attracted to just as long as you don't 0.95

00:11:17.740 go too far. And it's, and it's just, it's perversion. It's absolutely sin. And I, you know,

00:11:22.840 I think with that, um, there, there are desires. So one thing that I would say, you said the

00:11:27.920 deepest thing is our desires. And one thing that I've always said, and maybe you're welcome to

00:11:32.920 push back on this, but I feel like there's actions at the top, right? So our actions often flow out

00:11:39.420 of our feelings. Our feelings are influenced by our thought processes. Every idea, we take every

00:11:44.160 thought captive. And that thought process is even deeper than just a thought that just pops into

00:11:48.600 your head, but ideologies, ways of thinking, and then thoughts shaped by desires. But then desires

00:11:54.360 are often shaped by, it seems like the core is our beliefs. And I think there are some, I think

00:11:59.380 two things, at least one of two things can happen. We can have desires that are not inherently sinful

00:12:05.020 in and of themselves, but we're seeking to gratify these desires in sinful ways rather than

00:12:12.940 finding significance or value in God or satisfaction in God, pleasure and comfort in God. In his right

00:12:19.620 hand. There are pleasures forevermore in his presence. There's fullness of joy. And so there's

00:12:24.540 a way of going about desires that are, we could say maybe they're ordered desires, but we're

00:12:30.120 seeking to fulfill them in sinful ways. But then there's a whole nother category of desires.

00:12:35.400 The desire itself is inherently sinful. It is a misordered desire. So I think of Putin,

00:12:40.760 just to be a little bit controversial. I think of Putin, I'm not a fan of him. I think he's a

00:12:45.080 warlord, but at least he's a nationalist with all the globalism that we have these days. And God

00:12:50.800 affirms the goodness of sovereign nations, the right to protect their borders, free trade,

00:12:55.020 free markets, those kinds of things. And so I look at Putin and I see him as like a man who is

00:13:01.720 sinning in what I would say, sinning in the right direction. I saw Trump as somebody with plenty of

00:13:06.560 sin, but sinning in the right direction. But then there's a whole other group of men that seem to

00:13:11.120 become very popular in our day and age that the men of empathy the men of that are effeminate and

00:13:17.140 and and it seems like it's not only sin but it's sin in the wrong direction it's a misordered

00:13:23.500 desire do you hear what i'm getting at do you have any thoughts on that yeah i think i understand

00:13:27.980 what you mean i don't know that i'd call it sin in the right direction because any sin is taking

00:13:32.040 you in the wrong direction obviously i know you know that but but the distinction you make is a

00:13:37.320 legitimate one. Just think about the temptation of Jesus again. He'd fasted for 40 days and Satan

00:13:42.840 wanted him to turn stones into bread. It is not sinful to desire bread. We pray, give us our daily

00:13:50.240 bread, right? So, the sin in doing that would not have been that he's eating bread. The sin would

00:13:56.680 have been that he's gratifying that desire in a wrong way. And that's true. A lot of our legitimate

00:14:05.800 desires can become sin if they become idols or if we gratify them in the wrong way and all that.

00:14:13.780 We all understand that. But then there are certain things that even to desire that thing

00:14:18.900 is evil in and of itself. It's not a legitimate desire. And, of course, that applies to any kind

00:14:26.280 of lust that involves fornication or sexual sin. It would apply to the covening of something that

00:14:34.920 belongs to your neighbor, a whole host of things that just the desire itself would be evil. But

00:14:40.580 it's also possible to let a good desire be fulfilled in a sinful way. And you see that

00:14:47.380 in the temptation of Christ. Right. Yep. You're right. That's a great example. I, you know,

00:14:51.660 I keep thinking as you speak of coveting, I keep thinking of Thomas Sowell that, you know,

00:14:55.600 one of his famous quotes was, uh, once upon a time, you know, envy was one of the seven deadly

00:15:00.700 sins. And now it goes by its new name, social justice, you know, but that's exactly right.

00:15:05.720 The heart of covenant behind it is envying. And it's an indictment, an accusation of the living

00:15:11.660 God, ultimately saying that God got it wrong, that God gave something to my neighbor that rightfully

00:15:16.620 belongs to me, God. And I keep thinking of David, you know, where he says, the lines have fallen

00:15:22.400 for me in pleasant places. It's one thing to salute the sovereignty of God in theory, but it's

00:15:27.720 another to delight in what god has chosen to sovereignly provide in his providence is day that

00:15:33.540 so so we can it's one thing to salute the attribute of sovereignty is another to actually

00:15:38.960 delight in god's sovereignty by by having gratitude for what in his sovereignty he has chosen to do

00:15:45.700 you know and and so yeah i think that's good um so with the spirit of this age so here here's one

00:15:53.280 thing. I was in Acts 29 for a while and I left after Eric Mason wrote his book, Woke Church. So

00:15:59.620 that was around towards the end of 2018. And I went the Reformed Baptist route, 1689, probably

00:16:04.720 very similar to Votie Bauckham. I'd have a lot in common with the Apologia guys, Jeff Durbin,

00:16:09.480 James White now is with them. And so that's where I landed. And I'm grateful for the ways that God

00:16:14.840 has continued to lead me. And what I see as being biblical truth, what I believe is faithful to his

00:16:20.780 word. But when I was in the process of leaving Acts 29, a lot of guys were leaving. A lot of guys

00:16:25.180 were really getting sick of the woke stuff that was kind of happening in that context. And I

00:16:29.880 remember that some of the guys who were holding down the fort and they were staying, they were

00:16:34.380 accusing, and I found it ironic. And so I'm curious your take, but they were accusing the guys who

00:16:40.200 were leaving, myself included, of buying into the spirit of this age. You're buying into the spirit

00:16:46.480 And what they meant by, and I was so confused.

00:16:48.260 I was like, what do you mean?

00:16:50.040 And they said, you know, the spirit of this age, you know, loving Trump or wanting, you know, white fragility.

00:17:00.980 Or 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.

00:17:11.620 egalitarianism because i'm i'm thinking spirit of the age i'm thinking egalitarianism and draw

00:17:15.860 androgyny um the social justice envy covetousness all you know effeminacy um but but they're like no

00:17:23.460 the the the spirit of this age is everything that embodies conservatives and i was so confused

00:17:30.960 how would you respond to that well i would say it can actually go both ways okay uh if you think

00:17:37.980 about the secular political realm. I think obviously right now, at the moment in which we

00:17:46.520 live, the American left is far more prone to actually give approval and encouragement to 0.89

00:17:53.700 evil things, abortion and the whole LGBTQ agenda and all of that. But the American right has its

00:18:01.100 own issues as well. And the secular political right is really not going to take a stand against 0.59

00:18:08.900 LGBTQ agenda or any of that, at least not as a bloc. It's always been an issue for me. When I

00:18:17.420 first became a Christian, I was just 17 years old. Up to that point, politics was my biggest interest.

00:18:24.180 And I was a conservative in an era, this was 1960s and early 70s, in an era when it was not

00:18:30.840 popular for students to be conservative. Even then, you know, to be cool, you kind of had to

00:18:36.920 be a leftist and a radical. And it was not all that different from what it is today. Students

00:18:42.640 rioting and the news media, you know, lending all its support to every leftist cause. And I was a

00:18:49.340 conservative, but not saved and didn't know anything about the gospel, didn't understand it

00:18:55.420 anyway. I'd grown up in a liberal church where, you know, some of the words of scripture were

00:19:00.880 familiar to me, but I didn't know the gospel and stumbled across the gospel when I picked up my

00:19:06.380 Bible at random one night to read. And it opened, you know, randomly to the, I just flopped it open.

00:19:12.720 I treated my Bible like the, like a fortune cookie, you know, whatever my eyes would light

00:19:17.740 on. I would try to get some kind of, you know, meaning out of the message and usually just a

00:19:23.300 verse or two, but it opened to the first page of 1 Corinthians, and I thought, I've never read a

00:19:29.180 whole book of Scripture. Maybe I will, and so I counted the pages, and it was more pages than I

00:19:35.800 hoped, but I thought, well, I'll give it a try. I'm going to go, you know. By the time I got to

00:19:39.900 chapter 3, it absolutely devastated my worldview, which up to that point was, I think God likes me

00:19:46.740 because I'm conservative. I think God likes me because I'm interested in the more sophisticated

00:19:54.700 things in this world. Whereas all my fellow students were out rioting and promoting leftist

00:20:02.040 causes and rock music and drugs and all that. I was into classical music and conservative politics

00:20:08.640 and all the nice things. And yet that whole first three or four chapters of 1 Corinthians

00:20:15.680 are all about the wisdom of this world and how God hates it. You know, the wisdom of this world

00:20:22.040 is foolishness with God, Paul says. And he says, if anyone among you who seems to be wise,

00:20:27.960 let him become a fool that he may be wise. And God hates the wisdom of this world. He's chosen 0.98

00:20:33.460 that which is foolish to confound the wise. He says it over and over and over. And I remember 0.98

00:20:38.660 thinking that makes no no sense to me if if if god said he hated the foolishness of this world i

00:20:47.100 would agree agree and understand perfectly but why would he say he hates the wisdom of this world and

00:20:54.500 by the time i got through chapter three i realized the very best things about me are the things god

00:20:59.880 hates and and and you know came out of those first three chapters realizing i needed to be saved i i

00:21:07.620 had no hope before God. So, it was a good thing for me, but in my mind in those days, and still

00:21:13.960 I think this is to a large degree true, when Scripture speaks of the wisdom of this world

00:21:20.160 and the rulers of this world and all, it's talking about the political system that governs

00:21:25.120 this world. And I think Christians today, a lot of Christians, actually have the false hope 1.00

00:21:32.160 that salvation for our culture lies in politics that if we don't if we don't throw our collective

00:21:40.240 weight together in a voting block and vote in a bunch of conservative legislators there's that's

00:21:46.820 the only hope you know to save our society and the truth is that wouldn't save our society right

00:21:52.440 because you must be born again that's yeah it's still the wisdom of this world and the very best

00:21:57.960 you can do as a, you know, a worldly person without salvation is still filthy rags in God's

00:22:06.880 eyes. And so, yeah, you know, back to your original question. Yeah, I would say the dominant

00:22:16.940 spirit of the age today is a sort of left-leaning postmodern notion that you can't really know

00:22:26.060 anything for sure. You know, that's what dominates the world. And that is the spirit of the age

00:22:31.660 today. And it's radically different from the spirit of God, which starts with the things you

00:22:38.660 can absolutely know, because it's truth revealed by God, and that's scripture. So, our worldview

00:22:43.360 starts with scripture. You made reference earlier to the fact that Satan holds people captive. And

00:22:50.600 The 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.

00:23:04.280 And he's not only talking there about, you know, military hardware, he's talking about fleshly ideas, worldly politics, all those things.

00:23:14.060 That'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.

00:23:24.400 He's talking about biblical truth there. And that's this is the spiritual war.

00:23:30.060 It's not a it's not like a lot of charismatics think a mystical war against demons for, you know, real estate territory.

00:23:38.900 Right. It's it's a war against the powers of evil over the truth.

00:23:43.020 And 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.

00:23:54.640 And 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.

00:24:03.240 It's not political clout. It's not, you know, human warfare.

00:24:09.420 It's not, you know, sarcasm on Twitter, although some of us have dipped into that.

00:24:18.020 But what actually has power to make a difference in our culture is the truth of God's word.

00:24:24.540 And 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.

00:24:32.660 And the hallmark of postmodernity is the notion that nobody really knows anything for sure.

00:24:40.700 There may be objective truth out there.

00:24:42.880 There may be truth that's, you know, ultimate truth, but we can't know it for sure.

00:24:47.540 We don't have the means to know it.

00:24:49.280 Which is an objective claim, ironically.

00:24:51.800 So, objective truth cannot be known.

00:24:55.280 It cannot be ascertained or it doesn't even exist.

00:24:58.580 Right.

00:24:59.060 I'm not making an objective statement about that.

00:25:01.340 Most 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.

00:25:17.320 It 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.

00:25:33.320 That 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.

00:25:46.700 right and a lot of that's that's like the foundation of christianity yep amen yeah so a

00:25:52.020 lot of that plays into you know some relativism but a lot of that plays into some of the the

00:25:56.740 things that we've been facing as of late like you know standpoint epistemology or as votie

00:26:01.500 bacham calls it you know the ethnic gnosticism you know this idea that everybody has different

00:26:06.640 lived experiences and and so you can't know these things unless you've gone through certain

00:26:12.040 experiences. And so then even, you know, that taking that and trying to impose that godless

00:26:18.160 ideology within the Christian faith and upon the Bible as a hermeneutic saying that, you know, 0.77

00:26:23.840 like instead of a Hebrew and Greek scholars, we need, you know, a black guy and we need an Asian

00:26:28.520 woman and we need, you know, and, you know, to tell us what the Bible means. And of course we're

00:26:33.920 in a world of hurt very quickly. So one of the big characteristics that you drew was one of the

00:26:41.940 big contrast was all right spirit of this age uh relativism it's this uncertainty uh but an

00:26:47.780 area ironically it is an arrogant uncertainty you would think that uncertainty would make you humble

00:26:52.340 but it doesn't because the most humble thing you can do is say god wrote a book and i submit my

00:26:58.900 life to it go ahead sorry well there's nothing more arrogant than uncertainty and that's what

00:27:04.560 paul is saying in romans 1 when he said look that which may be known about god is is manifest in

00:27:10.420 him. God has built into the human mind and the human soul an innate knowledge that he exists,

00:27:17.180 and the only way to be a skeptic is to suppress that knowledge, and it's an arrogant thing to do

00:27:25.720 because you're suppressing knowledge of God that came from God and saying, no, I know better.

00:27:33.440 I know better. So, it's inherently arrogant, and it manifests. It's no surprise that it manifests

00:27:38.500 itself in all kinds of arrogance.

00:27:41.640 Right.

00:27:41.860 And it seems like, you know, you've obviously been in ministry longer than I have, so maybe

00:27:45.640 you can shed some light on this.

00:27:47.380 But just in my, you know, last seven, eight years in pastoral ministry, it seems like

00:27:54.300 one of the themes that has been at place, and I can't say it's rising today, but I

00:27:59.240 remember it even when I was in youth group, you know, when I was a teenager.

00:28:02.200 But it seemed like in the church, youth pastors, senior pastors, everybody was adopting this

00:28:07.540 new fad, which was basically, it was truncating humility and making humility synonymous with

00:28:15.220 uncertainty. If I could word it as simply as possible, I would say humility has become

00:28:21.600 synonymous with uncertainty. And so you would hear pastors praised for saying, you know,

00:28:28.040 I don't really know. I just, I don't. And they would be applauded. Whereas I would be like,

00:28:33.380 well, but the Bible says study to show yourself approved, rightly defined. And that's not to say

00:28:37.860 that a pastor or any creature, finite creature is omniscient. And every pastor, there is, I would

00:28:43.580 say a sliding bar. So just full disclosure where I'm at with eldership, you know, he must be apt

00:28:48.740 to teach. There's a minimum bottom line, no matter what church you're in across the world, any period

00:28:53.820 of time. However, that said, there are some churches where there might be a man who really

00:28:58.300 is qualified to be an elder in this church somewhere, right? Maybe it's a younger church,

00:29:04.080 a church plant. He may not necessarily be the right guy for the pick in a church that's been

00:29:10.400 around for 40 years with really seasoned saints. And that's not because he's not able to teach,

00:29:17.080 but as a church matures, you want a pastor who has matured along with him and stayed a few steps

00:29:21.960 ahead of them. So he continues like 1 Peter 5 to be an example to the flock. I don't know how to

00:29:27.320 be an example um if the if the flock is all ahead of me in in sanctification so all that being said

00:29:33.220 i you know there's this minimum bottom line of you must be able to teach but no matter who the

00:29:37.820 pastor is whether it's you whether it's me whether it's somebody else they're always going to be you

00:29:42.720 know we're going to be weaker on one theological point and stronger on another um but but we would

00:29:48.220 never say or we should never say uh that that our lack of knowledge is somehow a virtue yeah uh how

00:29:56.960 old are you? Can I ask? I'm 35. All right. So, 15 years ago, you were just 20 or so. In fact,

00:30:05.860 it made me go back almost 20 years ago when the emerging church movement was at its peak.

00:30:11.460 This was one of their favorite themes, this notion that humility, the essence of humility is

00:30:17.300 basically skepticism, doubt, uncertainty, all of those things. They called it epistemological

00:30:24.560 humility epistemological humility i at the time was writing a blog which is still online so you

00:30:32.060 could do a google search for epistemological humility in my name and you'll find i wrote

00:30:36.840 quite a bit about this at the time it's sort of debunking the idea that the the essence of

00:30:43.640 humility is is either uncertainty or a constant shifting of your opinions you know that's the

00:30:51.080 other idea that if you're not willing to change your mind about anything, then you're just not

00:30:57.120 humble. I had made the comment, I'm a Spurgeon aficionado, and I made the comment that one of

00:31:03.360 the remarkable things about Spurgeon's ministry, a lifetime of ministry, he became pastor of the

00:31:10.580 most important Baptist church in England at age 19 and began to preach his first recorded sermon,

00:31:19.960 his first published sermon is on theology proper. It's, I forget the title of it, but it's, I think

00:31:27.740 about the immutability of God. I think that may be the title, The Immutability of God. And he

00:31:32.540 branched out from there, you know, building sermons on theology and really, really covered

00:31:38.760 the basics of Christianity in his early years. And one of the remarkable things about him is that

00:31:45.540 I don't know of a single time where he had taken a position on some debatable theological point of

00:31:53.400 view and later changed his mind. He wasn't a man prone to change his mind. And the reason for that

00:31:59.560 was because he didn't preach on anything until he had thoroughly studied it and settled his mind.

00:32:05.320 And so he wasn't a sort of changeable, vacillating kind of preacher. When he preached on an issue,

00:32:12.520 It was because he was certain about it.

00:32:14.340 He was settled in his heart, and he didn't make any dramatic shifts in his theology for the entirety of his ministry.

00:32:21.680 And I was writing about that, and a whole lot of young guys wrote in and said, well, that's terrible.

00:32:26.900 That's arrogant, because it just shows he's not humble at all.

00:32:30.560 I mean, their idea was, if you're humble, you have to keep changing your mind.

00:32:35.720 No.

00:32:36.340 And it's just an upside-down view of what humility entails.

00:32:41.020 Right.

00:32:41.420 No, I completely agree.

00:32:42.620 And I can say that from the other side, as what I would say is a bad example, and the

00:32:47.160 Lord has been merciful despite my failure.

00:32:49.400 But I started off as a vineyard church planter, then moved to Acts 29.

00:32:54.800 The vineyard was egalitarian, and I believe it still is.

00:32:57.460 I don't really follow much, but the gifts of the Spirit, you know, and so I walked into

00:33:02.640 all these things, cessationism, complementarianism, which even that now I would describe myself

00:33:09.520 as somebody who's patriarchal, because I think even complementarianism in many cases, or at least

00:33:14.660 would take a long time to explain what I mean when I say complementarian. I don't think it's just

00:33:19.340 role, but I think it's not just male and female roles he assigned them, but male and female

00:33:23.060 natures he designed them, that the difference between men and women goes all the way down.

00:33:27.000 And so, you know, but all these things I came into later, cessationism, complementarianism,

00:33:31.460 Calvinism. And so I did change my mind. And I would say that it hurts the church.

00:33:39.080 Every time we shifted, the Lord honored that because it was, you know, change in the right direction is what the Bible would call repentance.

00:33:48.060 You know, so I was repenting, but it wasn't ideal.

00:33:53.380 You know, Lord willing, you know, you would have come to that ahead of time.

00:33:58.300 And I should clarify, because I don't mean that I think it's wrong to change your mind.

00:34:02.180 I've changed my mind on a number of things.

00:34:03.920 I 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.

00:34:12.240 I think all of us would look back on our lives and say, oh, it would have been better if I'd done that.

00:34:17.380 Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

00:34:19.440 There are videos, recordings, sermons that I don't have out there anymore because I'm like, yeah, I don't stand by that anymore.

00:34:26.340 And there's probably some stuff out there that I wish wasn't out there, and it's shameful

00:34:31.120 because it's, man, I should have known better, or at least should have done what Spurgeon

00:34:35.600 did and just not teach that until I really, really had studied the issue more.

00:34:40.080 So I agree with you.

00:34:41.200 I think that that's admirable, and it just goes to the point of, yeah, this whole idea

00:34:46.840 of uncertainty being synonymous with humility is a sham.

00:34:50.440 It does make me think a little bit of, one of my friends is Jared Longshore, and I know

00:34:55.440 that he, you know, that he disappointed a lot of Baptists with the transition that he made.

00:34:59.700 But I remember, you know, one tweet that went out there was basically kind of demonizing the change inherently.

00:35:07.540 And I don't know this man's thoughts and those kinds of things.

00:35:10.000 And you may know what I'm talking about, but I won't be any more specific than that.

00:35:13.800 But the point was, you know, we shouldn't applaud somebody changing, you know, in their doctrine.

00:35:18.480 To me, I would just want to say, because I am a Baptist, but I want to say as a Baptist,

00:35:22.640 I don't applaud you because you've now embraced a position that is not biblical. That's why I don't

00:35:28.840 applaud you. That's why this isn't praiseworthy, because I think that that's an unbiblical 1.00

00:35:33.340 position. And I think that it's still within the banner of orthodoxy. You're still a brother in 0.88

00:35:37.340 Christ. We wish you well. We love you, all these kinds of things. But you would better serve the

00:35:41.240 people of God by holding to things that, of course, I believe as a Baptist are biblical. But what I

00:35:46.600 don't want to do is just take change itself and and somehow demonize change because if any

00:35:53.760 presbyterian became a baptist i would be applauding that change and so it's not change is not the

00:35:59.520 problem the question is are we changing or conforming more into the image of christ or

00:36:05.000 further away are we being renewed by the transforming transforming is a change is our

00:36:09.860 mind being transformed more into christ likeness and sound biblical doctrine or which are we changing

00:36:16.420 for the better or the worse so yeah agreed and change is only a problem uh if you start to think

00:36:22.940 of change itself as a virtue i have a friend i had a friend uh he really no longer is in touch

00:36:29.540 with me but uh he he would make these uh major worldview changes an entire paradigm shift every

00:36:37.940 three or four years and he went from being a um arminian to a calvinist to a hyper calvinist

00:36:46.400 to a very soft Calvinist to an ecumenist to an eastern orthodox wow you know and he's made all

00:36:54.380 of those changes maybe you know with with as little sometimes as two years in between and

00:37:03.820 he wrote an article after one of his major changes saying this very thing that he believes

00:37:10.120 changing your mind is the very essence of humility that was like the title of his article

00:37:14.720 Yeah, 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.

00:37:32.980 And 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.

00:37:50.740 Like, 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.

00:38:03.060 That sort of thing really irritates me, you know, no matter which direction you're changing.

00:38:08.140 If you just changed your position, you don't need to go around picking fights with everybody.

00:38:12.420 It seems like the sort of people who are afflicted with the problem we're talking about, that's what they always do.

00:38:20.740 they, it's almost as if they love the argument more than they love the truth.

00:38:25.160 Yeah, that's a really good point.

00:38:26.380 So we can't, change is not inherently bad.

00:38:28.600 It's not inherently good.

00:38:29.700 If you're changing the right direction, the Bible calls that repentance.

00:38:32.260 It's good.

00:38:32.920 If you're changing the wrong direction, the Bible calls that compromise, sin.

00:38:36.160 It's bad.

00:38:37.240 So change in and of itself is not a virtue because change signifies ignorance and ignorance

00:38:42.820 means humility.

00:38:44.020 We can't do that, but we also shouldn't praise change just for the sake of change.

00:38:49.580 Right.

00:38:50.020 Right. Remember, scripture says, be steadfast, immovable.

00:38:54.600 So there is a sense in which steadfastness is virtuous, you know, unless you're being stubborn about something you're wrong in.

00:39:04.340 So it is kind of hard to pin down, isn't it?

00:39:07.600 There 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.

00:39:16.960 Right. Good point.

00:39:18.300 So, any other thoughts on spirit of this age, spirit of God?

00:39:21.780 The big one that it seems like we've been hitting is relativism versus steadfast, unmovable, unshakable, absolute truth.

00:39:28.600 Yeah, and I would say there's also an important distinction to be made between worldliness and heavenly mindedness.

00:39:35.000 Scripture commands us to set our affections on things that are above.

00:39:40.160 And 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.

00:39:50.580 You've heard that saying, I'm sure.

00:39:52.980 But Scripture commands us to set our affections on things above.

00:39:56.240 And 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.

00:40:14.200 Whatever's popular in the world right now is going to be popular soon in the church.

00:40:19.620 The church always lags behind.

00:40:21.480 And so it's kind of embarrassing, but they do it. 0.99

00:40:24.560 I mean, you go to any kind of large Christian gathering, the national religious broadcasters or used to be Christian booksellers were the worst.

00:40:32.800 And I've been to their convention in a while, so I don't know if it's still quite this bad. 0.95

00:40:36.480 But 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.

00:40:55.220 It's just it's cheesy and it's laughable in the eyes of the world.

00:40:59.740 It doesn't win the world's admiration, but the opposite.

00:41:02.360 It makes makes the world think that we are shallow.

00:41:06.080 and it is a shallow approach. It's interesting. I was just listening this morning to, I don't want

00:41:12.100 to give a commercial for another podcast, but I have to say the Just Thinking podcast, those guys,

00:41:17.820 they do these long form podcasts. I think their most recent one is like three hours long. And in

00:41:24.020 the first hour, they're talking about this very thing, how, and Daryl Harrison is eloquent with 0.95

00:41:29.820 it, talking about how sad it is that Christians are addicted to borrowing fads from the world. 0.93

00:41:38.320 He's much more eloquent than I am about it.

00:41:40.340 So, just encourage you to have them listen to that.

00:41:44.280 Yeah, no, Daryl and Virgil are great.

00:41:46.980 We've had them on our show before, and they were super helpful these last few years in

00:41:51.340 processing these kinds of things.

00:41:52.520 But you're right.

00:41:53.340 That's another thing that I felt with Acts 29, is they transitioned away from Driscoll

00:41:57.120 and, and tried to rebrand because Acts 29 was kind of always about branding.

00:42:03.420 I, you know, at first I didn't really know what was going on and it sounded good.

00:42:06.740 You know, that they, they really tried to emphasize, you know, five theological distinctives,

00:42:12.420 right.

00:42:12.660 And one of them was humility, you know, and I think diversity was one of them, you know,

00:42:17.400 and then another was something to do with the Holy Spirit that was just vague enough

00:42:22.080 to where you could be a cessationist and be in Acts 29, but it was very much in line with

00:42:26.600 the, you know, the Chandler Baptist, uh, Baptocostal kind of thing, and kind of put,

00:42:30.260 trying to push the movement a little bit more towards the continuationist position.

00:42:33.760 But the humility one really stood out to me, um, because as I engaged more in the movement

00:42:39.680 as a local Acts 29 pastor and began to make more, you know, relationships and then began

00:42:44.140 to see what was happening at, at the international level in our conferences and these kinds of

00:42:49.200 things.

00:42:49.400 I'll never forget when, you know, they, they had this panel with Brandon Washington, it

00:42:53.280 It was Brandon Washington.

00:42:54.140 Thibidi Anabai was actually the plenary.

00:42:56.620 He was a guest speaker that year,

00:42:58.100 but it was Brandon Washington,

00:42:59.960 Leon's Crump, Eric Mason.

00:43:02.680 And, you know, we're supposed to be,

00:43:04.860 now we are characterized

00:43:05.760 as a movement of humility.

00:43:07.040 You could tell it was just, 0.78

00:43:08.640 Driscoll just got drugged through the mud.

00:43:11.840 And some of that's his own doing

00:43:13.260 and some of it, you know, maybe wasn't.

00:43:15.180 But either way, you know, Driscoll,

00:43:17.300 we don't want to be associated with him.

00:43:18.860 Being tied to Driscoll is a bad look for us.

00:43:20.900 We need to rebrand.

00:43:22.160 We need to pivot.

00:43:22.780 we need to draw a big as big of a gap as we can get away from driscoll and one of the things that

00:43:28.500 you know um you know christianity today did their rise and fall of mars hill which i would just say

00:43:33.000 all right somebody needs to do that but christianity today is not qualified for the job

00:43:36.540 a bunch of egalitarians you know telling you know so i you know somebody should do that because i

00:43:41.460 think there would be a lot of helpful things in that diagnosis to see you know what what went

00:43:45.160 wrong but the point is you know driscoll got labeled as toxic masculinity and all these kinds

00:43:50.040 of things. And, and so then it's like, we're going this other direction. But what I realized is

00:43:54.420 there really, even though we were shifting and rebranding, there was still one constant theme.

00:43:58.900 And the constant theme was, I believe the fear of man, the constant theme, it was the spirit of

00:44:04.440 this age. And in my opinion, that doesn't mean there aren't good acts 29 pastors. And that doesn't

00:44:08.260 mean that, you know, they're all heretics by any stretch, but I feel like the overarching culture

00:44:12.920 by some of the key leaders, the, the, it could go from black to white from Driscoll to whatever 0.59

00:44:19.360 the opposite of driscoll is um stark differences but really still the same thing which is exactly

00:44:25.880 precisely what you were saying earlier you know it could be pro-trump pro-biden and yet still the

00:44:30.480 spirit of this age for different reasons and in different ways but but one of the common themes is

00:44:35.140 um the fear of man i want to be look good in the eyes of of the world so the boastful

00:44:40.640 pride of life you have any thoughts on that yeah and and you know you you said that uh

00:44:48.040 The new virtues that were touted were humility and diversity, probably inclusion as well.

00:44:54.700 These are classic postmodern values.

00:44:57.460 They're not biblical values.

00:44:58.920 You don't see the word diversity in Scripture.

00:45:01.760 There are principles associated with the idea of diversity that we learn from Scripture.

00:45:07.460 I mean, God made the human race to be diverse, and all of that is good.

00:45:13.640 But 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.

00:45:27.360 These are what Scripture calls virtue, and they don't really go with any of the postmodern values, which are inclusion, diversity, and epistemological humility.

00:45:40.780 And those things sort of blend together to say, you just cannot challenge anyone else's view.

00:45:47.140 That other guy's opinion is every bit as good and valid as mine.

00:45:51.540 And therefore, I'm not supposed to tell anybody they're wrong.

00:45:54.300 We're just all supposed to get along.

00:45:56.020 And the one exception to that is anybody who is too certain about anything, you can tell that guy he's wrong.

00:46:01.420 Exactly.

00:46:01.880 And 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.

00:46:09.620 and the critical race theory thing was popping up.

00:46:11.480 And of course, it's always under the banner

00:46:13.080 of racial reconciliation, right?

00:46:14.520 So the left, they learn, you know,

00:46:16.480 so they, oh, woke is a bad word now.

00:46:18.260 So they'll stop using it.

00:46:19.660 And that's why you have to have discernment,

00:46:21.440 you know, because people, you know,

00:46:24.000 the word shibala, you know,

00:46:25.740 like who can actually pronounce it right? 1.00

00:46:27.660 So it's sometimes good.

00:46:28.660 I think it was J.I. Packer who,

00:46:30.160 with, you know, the word inerrancy,

00:46:31.420 it's good to have,

00:46:32.580 because some guys are saying,

00:46:33.300 well, maybe we just say infallibility

00:46:34.660 because some people are getting hung up on inerrancy.

00:46:36.600 He's like, no, I think inerrancy is a good word.

00:46:38.300 Sometimes it's good to have that shibboleth word that the liberals can't pronounce, you know, and it helps us to spot them.

00:46:44.540 And, you know, and so like now, you know, certain guys, oh, well, not critical race theory.

00:46:48.420 I just think we need to have a panel every single year about racial reconciliation.

00:46:52.200 Oh, you mean critical race theory? 0.53

00:46:54.520 Because that's the way that they do it.

00:46:56.400 They don't do that we're reconciled in Christ who has put to death a hostility.

00:47:00.380 It's not biblical reconciliation.

00:47:02.400 it's the world's tactics and they just learned that this this particular term i can't use it

00:47:08.580 anymore because it'll oust me as as the progressive that i actually am so all that being said you're

00:47:12.980 absolutely right i started having problems because i was pushing back and and i was doing it

00:47:17.400 charitably but i was doing it with with a degree of certainty no this is correct this is incorrect

00:47:23.020 and um and that was just absolutely not tolerated so yeah right so diversity of skin color is

00:47:30.900 desirable, but diversity of thought is not. And so, in an environment like that, you see this 0.96

00:47:37.660 not just in the evangelical movement, but in a much wider way in the world at large,

00:47:44.260 that you're expected to fall in line with what is politically correct and currently dominant.

00:47:49.540 And if you don't, you will be canceled. And it's begun to change so quickly that it's hard to keep

00:47:55.280 up with five years ago no one no one would have ever expected that the disney corporation would

00:48:03.020 come out in opposition to a law that says you know people who are devoted to the lgbtq thing

00:48:12.020 shouldn't be indoctrinating my children right and and yet now that's you know it's changed so

00:48:18.560 quickly when when obama ran for president in his first term he said he was opposed to gay marriage

00:48:24.580 Right. You say that today you're permanently canceled. Right. Yep. You're right. Well, okay.

00:48:30.500 Well, let's go ahead and land the plane. I think that's really helpful with, you know, the spirit

00:48:34.100 of this age versus the spirit of God. Um, and we want to be about the spirit of God and not give

00:48:39.640 way to the spirit of this age. Um, you gave me permission in your email to ask you about this.

00:48:45.160 So I obviously you're not sanctioned and you don't know, have a crystal ball or anything like

00:48:49.120 that. But what do you suspect, just speaking from your personal knowledge, where do you think Grace

00:48:55.540 Community Church is heading? John MacArthur, I mean, maybe he'll live for another 40 years,

00:48:59.320 but it's not likely. What do you think the plan's going to be? Yeah, John's in his mid-80s right

00:49:04.160 now. His father lived to be 90 and preached, at least taught a Sunday school class within a month

00:49:11.260 before he died. And John is in better health than his father was. So, you know, it's conceivable he

00:49:17.780 could still be preaching at Grace Church another decade, and I hope that happens. So, we'll see.

00:49:26.320 I would not even hazard a guess what's going to happen at Grace Church. They're obviously going

00:49:31.280 to have to do a search for a new pastor, and that will be the responsibility of the elders. I don't

00:49:36.520 think there can be a hardcore succession plan with a successor to John MacArthur put in place,

00:49:43.720 as long as he's still there nobody wants to nobody wants to see him move from the scene i

00:49:49.880 hope he stays as long as he can right do you think john will um do you think he'll speak into that

00:49:55.440 when it when it comes time do or do you think he'll just completely leave it to the elders

00:49:58.860 or do you think you know he might express his opinion but he wouldn't i i i don't think he

00:50:03.860 would it'd have to be some extraordinary circumstances for him to to actually choose

00:50:09.600 a successor. You know, he'd have to be fatally ill and know that he has only a month to live

00:50:14.340 or something like that. I don't think he wants to intrude in that. It is the role of the elders

00:50:20.640 to make that choice. And Grace to You. Grace to You is a separate organization. That's where I'm

00:50:26.360 at. Grace to You, we produce the radio ministry and other media for John MacArthur. And we have

00:50:33.420 talked about this uh at length in fact it's written in our purpose statement that grace to

00:50:38.920 you exists to expand the scope of john's teaching ministry and uh we continue we we plan to continue

00:50:46.680 airing his sermons long after i'm dead so uh right well ligonier ligonier's doing that all

00:50:53.920 every day with rc scroll and still very successful with it jay merton mcgee has been dead more than

00:50:59.060 25 years, and his ministry is larger now than it was when he was alive. And the reason that's

00:51:06.360 possible, you think about McGee and John MacArthur, they're totally different theologically,

00:51:12.320 but what they do have in common is both of them just open the scriptures and teach. They're not

00:51:17.120 exegeting current events. They're not talking about, you know, what's popular this year or

00:51:22.300 whatever, we commonly air sermons that John preached in the early 1970s on Grace to You

00:51:29.220 today. So, that was, what, 40 years, 50 years ago, 50 years. So, we'll air sermons that are 50 years

00:51:38.180 old right now. And so, there's no reason we can't be airing the sermons John's preaching right now

00:51:44.680 50 years from now. I won't be around to see it, but I think Grace to You will continue to broadcast

00:51:51.240 John MacArthur's teaching until no one wants to hear it anymore. And it's hard for me to foresee

00:51:58.200 that because his teaching is so clear and easy to follow and so thoroughly biblical. And it's not

00:52:04.340 time bound. It's not bound to any zip code. He's not preaching to any particular demographic. He's

00:52:10.700 just explaining what the scriptures say. And it translates into any language in any time zone.

00:52:15.940 And I think should translate easily into any era.

00:52:19.820 We still read Spurgeon and benefit from him.

00:52:23.500 And I wish somebody had recorded his voice.

00:52:25.860 They could have, and nobody did.

00:52:27.740 Oh, yeah.

00:52:28.420 But we've got enough of John on record that, in fact, we have a stash of sermons that have never been broadcast on the radio.

00:52:37.680 So we could do fresh material for probably 20 more years and never air the same sermon twice.

00:52:44.200 Wow. That's really cool.

00:52:46.160 So, 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.

00:52:56.600 Yeah, 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.

00:53:11.640 And 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?

00:53:23.240 Do 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?

00:53:31.400 Yeah, sure.

00:53:31.840 There's casual talk about it, obviously.

00:53:34.020 We don't have a plan to move or anything.

00:53:36.340 And we are tied to Grace Church in one sense.

00:53:39.940 Organizationally, we're separate.

00:53:40.900 We've always had a separate budget.

00:53:43.300 Grace to you has always been self-supporting.

00:53:44.940 We don't depend on income from the church.

00:53:48.480 And so we could conceivably move to any place in the world that we wanted to.

00:53:55.680 And there may be someday tax benefits in doing that and cost of living benefits to do it.

00:54:02.980 We don't have a plan to do it, but we have discussed the possibility.

00:54:06.340 As long as John's here, though, we want to stay close to Grace Church.

00:54:09.280 one of the requirements to be employed at grace to you is you have to be a

00:54:12.600 grace church member. Okay. So, so we can't,

00:54:16.480 we don't want to move away from the church as long as John's there at least.

00:54:21.500 Right. And you're an elder at the church, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay.

00:54:27.040 Well, I'll, I'll stop. I'll stop trying to get older. What? Yeah. It's,

00:54:31.460 it's confusing to people because I pastor an adult fellowship group,

00:54:35.200 a Sunday school class, but I'm technically a lay elder.

00:54:38.420 I 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.

00:54:56.580 Great. 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.

00:55:03.600 Thanks so much for coming on the show. Is there any final thoughts you want to leave us with?

00:55:08.420 No, 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.

00:55:26.340 They 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.

00:55:37.760 And I think courage is one of the things that is lacking among ministers today.

00:55:42.520 Pastors, they are too afraid of what the world thinks and too afraid to go against what's politically correct.

00:55:51.360 And let's face it, these days, you can pay a very high price just for expressing the wrong opinion.

00:55:58.280 That's right.

00:55:58.740 We've seen people, well-known people, get canceled on Twitter.

00:56:02.760 We have evangelicals.

00:56:04.320 Justin Peters is no longer on Twitter because just the opposition to a couple of benign things that he said, actually.

00:56:13.000 But that happens a lot.

00:56:15.880 You have to have a lot of courage to say what you need to say if you're a person in ministry today.

00:56:22.980 And so that would be my way to sum all of this up.

00:56:26.720 If we're going to honor the spirit of the Lord and not the spirit of this world, it's going to take a great deal of courage to do that.

00:56:32.980 Amen.

00:56:33.540 All right.

00:56:33.900 Well, thanks for coming on the show, Phil.

00:56:35.120 I really appreciate it.

00:56:36.700 Thank you.

00:56:37.540 Thanks so much for listening.

00:56:38.520 But real quick, before you go, do us a small favor, take a moment, and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show.

00:56:45.880 This is undoubtedly the best way

00:56:48.340 that you can help us get this biblically faithful content

00:56:51.240 to as many people as possible.

00:56:53.400 Thanks so much.

The NXR Podcast - May 10, 2022

THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Spirit Of The Age vs. The Spirit Of God

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