Pastor Joel Webbin, Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, and Gary DeMar address the church's cultural lag at the Truth Matters Conference, arguing that fear of man causes evangelicals to trail five to eight years behind figures like Jordan Peterson on issues ranging from critical race theory to transgenderism. They condemn institutional gatekeeping that blocks young men from leadership and highlight how misguided compassion for perpetrators harms victims, urging believers to wield Scripture's sword rather than merely acknowledging it. Ultimately, while core gospel truths remain essential, secondary doctrines become non-negotiable in hostile times if they signal a willingness to fight for the faith. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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A Thinking Church Repenting00:09:38
Big news, really big news.
Our next Right Response Conference is in the works.
We've got a number of things already lined up and organized.
This is what we've got so far.
The whole conference, three days long on post millennialism and theonomy.
And the speakers Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Gary DeMar, and of course, yours truly, Pastor Joel Webbin.
We've got a great lineup, we've got great topics.
If you want to find out dates, And location and registration and anything else, go and visit our website, rightresponseconference.com.
Rightresponseconference.com.
So, good morning, guys.
When the conference was being birthed and we were getting ready to call these speakers, it's something how God providentially put each and every one of us together in each other's paths.
And I praise God for this opportunity for us to talk about what we have talked about and answer some questions that might be on your heart.
We've received some questions that we're going to go through.
And again, just to highlight and amplify the talks, the messages that have already gone forth, and the issues as well, the issues of our day.
So we have Mike Harding.
I want to keep calling you me.
I take it as a compliment.
Mike Harding, Pastor Mike Harding from Ohio.
His wife Emily and Joanna is here with him.
And we have Samuel Say, Christian blogger, and his wife Annie is here with him.
And we have Pastor Joel Weben from Covenant Bible Church, also the president of Right Response Ministries.
With us.
Each speaker had an area where they have been dealing with a lot or they have dealt with a lot.
And we have them here to, again, expound and explain, to help us see what the word says, what is clear in the word about these things, how we should think through these things.
That's what I say to the church here that I serve.
I say, we need to be a thinking church, thinking through.
Not just feeling through things, because that seems to have taken over the culture feelings and personal truths, and those things that have really been a thorn in the side of our culture.
So, here, some of the questions.
Let's start off with the first questions.
We're going to give equal space for.
To address these questions, the first question is really all of us.
Why does the church seem to be indifferent, even resistant at times in leading the culture as the prophetic voice to the culture?
Start with you, Joel.
For the last 10 minutes, Sam has been holding the microphone like this.
I see that.
He's slow to write, slow to speak.
But he knows that I'll talk.
He's like, Joel, talk.
All right.
Can you repeat the question one more time?
Of course.
The gist of it, but just one more time.
Of course.
Why does the church seem to be indifferent, even resistant at times, in leading the culture as the prophetic voice of the culture?
Right.
So, yeah, and I'm glad that in the question the wording included resistance, because I don't think it's mere indifference.
I don't think it's just that the church is uninterested or the church is neutral or the church is apathetic.
I think that the church is highly motivated to stay out of cultural and political issues because it wants to.
Bow the knee to man rather than the fear of God.
And what I've noticed in my short time of life and ministry and following Christ, most importantly, is that the church sadly tends to be about five to eight years behind the culture.
And so sometimes that can be, it's never good in an inherently good kind of sense.
But if the culture is going into a particular realm of idolatry, a particular realm of perversion, a particular realm of sin, Then you can usually count on the church to come into that later than the culture.
What I haven't witnessed until really this moment, and I'm sure it's happened before, Ecclesiastes, nothing new under the suns, but just in my short lifespan, what's novel to me is the culture coming out of certain idolatry, out of certain sin, and sadly, the church is still in it.
So the church is actually, the evangelical church at large, I think is on the wrong side.
Of a certain issue where a lot of the culture is actually coming out and getting on the right side.
Okay, so the example that I would use: The Daily Wire, Jordan Peterson, you know, and Ben Shapiro, and Louder with Crowder, and The Blaze, and you know, all these different networks and entities, Fox News, Tucker Carlson.
Like, I'm not saying they're right about everything, and my whole point is to describe them as culture rather than church, because most of these guys are not.
Christians.
Now, there are Christians in these organizations.
Like, I'm really grateful for Megan Basham with The Daily Wire.
I'm grateful for Steve Day.
So, there are Christians in there, and that's strategic.
We need Christians in these organizations.
But a lot of them are headed by guys like Ben Shapiro, who's not a Christian.
Jordan Peterson, I pray God saves him, but as far as I can tell right now, he's not regenerate.
He has an appreciation, respect for the Word of God, but he doesn't see Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, the only.
So, my point is, but these guys are leading the charge, not.
The evangelical church.
They are leading the charge against critical race theory, against intersectionality, against transgenderism and the whole LGBT, you know, just totalitarian militant arm of the culture and the political mechanisms that are saying you must affirm this.
It's not enough to tolerate anymore.
You have to applaud, you have to cheer, you have to celebrate.
This needs to be, we need to have drag queen story hour.
It needs to be in our libraries, it needs to be in this, it needs to be in that.
I see more guys who are unregenerate coming out and talking about it.
And I think the church, and this is my whole point, I think the church is going to catch up about five to eight years after the fact.
And I've always seen that principle, the church lagging five to eight years behind the culture.
I've always seen that in terms of the culture going into further degradation, the culture going into further perversion, the culture going into further idolatry, and the church coming into it also, but slower.
This is the first time in my life I've seen the culture go so far in one direction towards sin that enough people in the culture that aren't even regenerate Christians are saying, Yeah, we don't want to trans kids.
We're pagans and we still don't want to trans kids.
And then the church.
For the first time, is not going to be slow to sin.
I think they're going to be slow to repent.
For the first time in my life, the church is going to be not compromising behind the culture, but repenting behind the culture.
And so, all that, in terms of the actual question, my answer, is fear of man.
Fear of man.
So, why?
Getting down to the heart, the reason, the motive.
Why is the church always slow?
They're slow to join the culture in compromise, they're slow to join the culture in reformation.
Why are they always slow?
Because the church surveys the land, looks at all the different possible outcomes, looks at.
Because the church does more PR than it does repentance.
The church cares more about its image than faithfulness to Christ.
The church cares more.
Like, that's why.
So I think the church is always behind.
There is something to be said for I don't want to be reckless.
I want to be seasoned.
I want to be methodical.
I want to be wise.
This is not representative of wisdom and carefulness.
I think it's representative of compromise and cowardice.
The church is cowardly.
I view the church today, evangelicalism, in this particular cultural moment, as the armies of Israel when Goliath would come out day after day from the Philistines and taunt the armies of the living God, and they would be quaking in their boots.
They would be trembling and shivering, all lined up, all lined up, but no one willing to go and meet the challenge.
The Cowardice of Compromise00:13:02
Once David meets the challenge, And he cuts off Goliath's head with his own sword.
Then, and only then, the armies of Israel begin to charge and run down the Philistines.
And I think that's the way that most Christians operate.
Most Christians, because of sin, because we're human, because we don't reach a state of sinless perfection in this life, most Christians need a champion.
Most Christians, they need a hero.
Most Christians, they will charge the enemy.
But after the strong man, I think of Jesus in the parable.
The strong man first has to be bound, and then the servants can go in and plunder the house.
We need a champion.
But by God's grace, let's let that champion not be a pagan.
I don't want Jordan Peterson to be our champion.
I love Jordan Peterson.
I'm grateful for him.
But could we have a Christian champion?
That'd be nice.
Amen.
Amen.
Joel, we are learning very quickly.
That you steal a lot of thunder because you're so long winded in a good way, in a very good way.
You told me to go first.
Yes, sir.
That was your mistake.
That was strategic.
But yes, but you picked up, I was agreeing with the David and Goliath, that passage has been tortured in mainstream evangelicalism.
What I see there when I read that, when you said the people need a champion, a Christian champion, David was jealous for God's glory.
Right?
David was so upset that nobody stepped up, as Joel says, nobody has stepped up.
Is no one going to come and defend the Lord Jesus Christ, the God that we serve?
Is there no one going to stand?
And that's what holds me.
That's what gets me going when I read that passage.
All of the other highlighted things that go on in him slaying Goliath, but the motive or the reason why he went and he was so passionate fear of God and fear for the glory of his name above anything else.
That's good.
That's good, Jeroboam.
Thank you.
Sam?
Yeah.
Not sure there's much I can say after you two wise men have already addressed this, but as you're speaking, I'm thinking of something I told you actually when we did the radio show to promote this event.
I've had a lot of emails and calls from pastors, and they will be asking me, Sam, I'm getting pressured to embrace critical race theory because.
If I don't teach critical race theory, I will lose some of my black church members, or some of our black neighbors will not be comfortable coming to our church.
And this would be usually white pastors.
I'm like, what are you calling me for?
God has already told you what to do.
You're calling me because you're telling me you are afraid of black people, which is racist, right?
Because you wouldn't think, well, I'm afraid of saying something because it might offend white people.
I became attracted to a good church, not because they were teaching critical race theory, but because they were teaching the gospel.
I am a sinner above everything else.
And God, the gospel brings sinners to God and to a local church.
But people fear men more than they fear God.
And the irony of people being afraid to address the issue of justice and what's happening in our culture is they think they are being the opposite of our forefathers in terms of people who were supporting slavery before, who were not speaking on slavery, while they were also operating out of the fear of man as well.
So it's deeply concerning.
Now, with all that being said, and I know we all here would agree with this, The church is still the light of the world, right?
We are still the salt of the earth.
The church is still the very best at addressing this issue.
But we are also failing the world because our light is not shining as bright as it can.
So, yeah, so all I can really say is a lot of the failure to resist what's happening in our culture is because a lot of us are afraid.
And I think maybe on another point is in the 90s, the fundamentalists were very influential, and they would oftentimes go too far in that they would forget that they were ambassadors for Christ over being an activist for a cause.
So we've done the reverse now where we are simply just, well, let's just preach the gospel, or as you'd say oftentimes, let's just be pietist.
Let's just ignore the world around us.
But that's an overcorrection that is not godly.
We are called to address our souls, and that includes addressing everything that's happening that is waging war against us, including our culture.
Persecuting us through these views that are against the gospel and Christ.
Mike, the prophetic voice, when you say the prophetic voice, which is at the end of this question, the church is supposed to lead the culture in all things because we as the church are commanded to go and teach them to obey Christ.
And so there is a failure or A failure, their indifference, the question says, the indifference and even resistance to being the prophetic voice to the culture.
And I think it has a lot to do with how Joel walked through the culture leading the church in these things, as opposed to the church leading the culture in all things.
Yeah, so I would really, really add just three things.
I agree in part.
With what these men have said.
But one thing I would say is the buck stops here.
Pastors have failed to disciple church members.
And part of that is because pastors have compromised on truth.
You can't be a prophetic voice to the culture if you're willing to let the ends justify the means to get what you want.
Like, that is part of our problem.
Part of our problem is that we are compromised in our theology, we're compromised in our And our approach to addressing issues.
And so Samuel said it right.
They've swung the pendulum from we stand on truth to maybe not necessarily dealing with it the most biblical way and attitude and action to we're just going to preach the gospel over here and that's all God's ever commanded us to do.
We've taken that whole disciple the nations out of the Great Commission.
And so I think there's aspects of that.
There's aspects of, to be honest, without going into too much of the detail, I think our eschatology has a lot to do with.
Why we're not engaging the culture the way that we should be.
And so I'm not trying to convince anybody to be one position or another.
What I'm trying to say is if we believe that we are not to engage the culture and the political sphere, well, one, we're reading the Bible completely off base because what was Jesus doing?
What was Jesus doing?
He was here to save sinners, he did not have to do a lot of the signs and miracles that he did.
Just think about that.
Jesus was here on a very specific mission, and then he gave us a very specific mission, and we've only taken part of that.
So I would say we failed at being a prophetic voice partly because we failed at reading our Bibles.
We failed at making disciples who make disciples, and that's part of the issue.
Next question.
We'll start with you, Mike.
How do you desire to serve in church leadership, elder, deacon, etc., But remain humble.
One is realizing that you stand in a position that every time you get up to preach, you're preaching to an audience of one.
And that God is going to judge you, and you're going to be held accountable for every person that has covenanted to be in that specific body, that church.
God doesn't hold me accountable for the person down the street who's not coming to my church, other than the fact that I'm supposed to share the gospel with them, but He does hold me accountable.
To disciple people.
And a lot of the time, that's admitting when you've been wrong on something.
Because sometimes your church members are going to pick up on things before you do.
Because you're human.
I tell our people all the time that I'm a sinner saved by grace, just like them.
I'm nobody special.
God just called me to a specific role in the church.
When we realize that we're sinners in desperate need of a Savior, it doesn't matter your position.
You acknowledge that there's only one thing that makes you different than the heatedness.
Who's outside those doors, and it's the grace of God.
And so I think that also plays into having a good understanding of our soteriology the fact that we do nothing to earn our salvation.
You're going to send me Sam.
I was trying to pass it off to him because I'm not a pastor.
I don't have, I'm not a leader at my local church.
But you do help in counsel.
Because you have pastor friends.
Yes, yes.
So, as a Christian, Christian to Christian, you are entrusted with the lives of other Christians, meaning they'll come to you because you've dealt with a lot of church context.
And so, I think your input would be helpful.
Yeah, well, I'm grateful for that.
But we, a pastor, of course, as a shepherd, any leader, is to.
Emulate Christ.
And when you think of Christ, he is as as Paul says in Colossians, he is the preeminent in the universe, he is the supreme being in the universe and yet he's the most humble person in the universe.
So, when we are to emulate him, when we are called to be like him, and yet we are Prideful.
We are the least like him in that way.
Of course, you know, the Son of Man came to serve.
So, I, while I'm not a pastor, I know that by serving in different ways, the act of service itself is of humility.
It is not to be served, it is to serve others.
So, like with anything, you know, when it concerns godliness, following Christ's example is the way.
And also just knowing that, from my experience, just, you know, knowing pastors, as soon as you become a pastor, that in and of itself gets very humbling.
Facing Goliath Without Strategy00:04:23
Because you learn very quickly that it is a very difficult, difficult call from God.
And we know, as Mike suggested, that there will be a greater judgment.
For pastors, that the Bible does say that not everyone should pursue that ministry.
So it's a very humbling calling.
I think that, you know, again, this particular cultural moment is unique in the sense that a lot of the gatekeepers, a lot of institutional authority and entities and organizations in our nation and society as a whole have utterly and completely discredited themselves.
The medical institution has discredited itself.
There's a lot of lack of trust.
The media has discredited itself by lying.
Government has discredited itself.
Hollywood and entertainment has discredited itself.
Academia, higher academia, all these kinds of things, right?
People were told if I go and get a college degree, it's okay if I take out debt because I'm going to get this great job.
I'm going to be able to pay it back.
And then a bunch of people got a gender studies degree and they're asking, would you like fries with that?
And they've got, you know, $120,000 of debt.
And Joe Biden said he'd pay it off and he hasn't.
I hope he doesn't.
So, all that being said, there's a lot of lack of trust with our institutions, and sadly, the church is no exception.
That would be one more institution that has discredited itself.
And so, I know this wasn't particularly the question, but I think there's a lot of righteously angry young men right now who are going to be denied eldership, they're going to be denied the diaconate because.
Because they want to be faithful, because they want to speak the truth.
They actually want to be like David.
David, to go back to that illustration, another piece of the puzzle was you're right, Mark, David was jealous for the glory of God.
But before he went and actually engaged Goliath, he was dissuaded by his brothers, his older brothers.
You could preach a sermon on that.
I think there are a lot of older brothers.
Right now, who are dissuading younger zealous brothers, they don't want that little brother to go and embarrass them.
And it's not because they think it's not out of love for the younger brother.
It's not, David, we don't want you to go and face down Goliath because you're going to die.
It's no, David, we don't want you to go and face down Goliath because we know we should be doing it.
And we won't.
We won't.
And it would be to our shame.
So it's not a love for David and wanting to protect his skin.
It's actually a love for their own self image and wanting to protect their own reputation.
David facing off Goliath, it wasn't just that Goliath needed to be slain.
There's a lot going on in the story, and one is David's choice to face down Goliath was an indictment of all of Israel.
David's older brothers, all the armies, King Saul.
King Saul should have faced down Goliath, right?
He even tries to put him in his armor.
There's a lot of things that we could draw out in that.
I want you to look like me as you go and face down.
And David's like, no, I'm going to face Goliath as David, not as King Saul.
If you want King Saul to face Goliath, then King Saul, get up and go face Goliath.
But if you won't do it, then a little boy's going to do it.
And he's going to do it as a little boy does it.
It's going to be a little unorthodox.
It's not going to be your typical strategy.
I'm not going to use a spear and a sword.
I'm going to go in there with my slingshot that I've been using to kill squirrels in the backyard.
That's how I'm going to face down.
I'm going to do it like a little boy, but I'm going to get it done.
And the reason a little boy's doing it is because all the men won't.
And so my point is these older brothers, these kids, Kings, these guys in institutional power, just like in the media, you're not going to get a position.
I'll save you a lot of time, young men, any young man listening to this who feels called to the ministry.
Young Men Embracing Truth00:07:35
Let me just tell you right now 99% chance you go to your pastor and say, I feel called to be an elder, or I want an opportunity to preach.
You're going to be told that you're reckless, that you're being arrogant, that you're being presumptuous, that you're being quarrelsome, that you're being divisive, that you don't have enough winsomeness.
You're going to be told, in so many words, no.
So, what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to wear your own armor.
You're going to have to do it as you.
You're not going to be able to wear King Saul's armor.
You're not going to be able to do it through the gatekeepers because they're going to deny you passage.
And so, what I'm saying is, you know, we're going to need new media companies.
We're going to need new doctors, Christian doctors in medicine.
We're going to need all the new institutions.
And at the level of the church, we're going to need a lot of church planters.
We're going to need a lot of young men who are willing to say, I don't want to be rogue.
I don't want to be disrespectful, but my pastor won't give me a shot and he won't be faithful himself.
And so it's going to look like a lot of guys planting churches in their living rooms.
And that's the beauty.
This is one of the reasons why I'm Baptist.
That's the beauty of our Baptist polity, is that when it comes to ordination, it's through the common suffrage of the saints.
So if you've got five to ten households that are willing to be in your living room and hear you preach God's words on a Sunday morning, they can ordain you.
And you can plant a church.
And I'm not saying that's ideal, but desperate moments call for some desperate means, not unfaithful means.
This is still within the realm of faithfulness, but it is a little different than what ordinarily we would see.
What do you believe?
We'll go to the next question.
Very good.
What do you believe is the biggest hindrance for?
I think this is going to gel with the first question.
What do you believe is the biggest hindrance for evangelicals accepting the truth of Scripture?
That seems like an oxymoron.
Right?
Evangelicals accepting the truth of Scripture.
That should be a given.
But I understand the question.
But what do you believe, we'll start with you, Samuel.
What do you believe is the biggest hindrance for evangelicals accepting the truth of Scripture?
So I think it would be helpful to put it in the context of, again, we've been talking a lot about the culture because the culture is having a great impact on the church.
It is pushing the church in a direction away from the lordship of Christ.
I think it's that we think we won't be offending someone with the truth or with anything we do.
The Bible is very clear you either offend God or you offend sinners.
And I think a lot of us believe we can be inoffensive to our culture while being truthful.
But that's impossible.
The Bible says that's not possible.
You are either a friend of God or you are a friend of the world.
And you are either an enemy of God or you're an enemy of the world.
There's no in between.
And I think a lot of us, a lot of evangelicals, want to believe that if they simply are friendly with the world, Then they can win the world to Christ.
But that's impossible.
The world hates us.
They are waging war against us.
But yeah, we're going into this battle thinking they want to be our friends when they don't.
So I would say that's the reason.
So, I would say, as I was thinking about, I agree 100% with what Samuel said.
I would also say that it's a lack of repentance.
Pride that is built up in the heart of man, pastors, leaders, all across our country, what we see is a lack of repentance.
And I know I'll get a lot of pushback for this, but even with people that are celebrated in the public sphere, Take, for example, Donald Trump.
I think he did a lot of great things for the country.
I'll be the first to say that.
But the man has not repented.
He's not.
He has not put his faith and trust in Jesus, as far as I can tell, even though people want that to be the case.
When he was asked about when have you repented, he said, Why would I need to repent?
That's not a Christian.
So, believers, I'm not hitting on Donald Trump.
Don't hear that.
It's just that.
I'm just using that as an example because he's a very notable public figure.
And that's the problem with our culture right now a lack of acknowledging that Jesus is king and that we are to repent and follow him.
Not take liberty to be just completely on our own, making our own ideas.
That's pragmatism, regardless of what you seek the ends to be.
Not taking liberty to be overly pietistic.
As Joel has rightly claimed, that some ministers have been.
But in reality, we need to acknowledge that we have accountability to the one righteous king.
So let's not celebrate people so much as we are seeking to honor Jesus.
Joel?
So I think, double sided coin, I think the two primary hindrances to the evangelical church.
Really accepting the truth of Scripture and proclaiming the truth of Scripture and being that prophetic voice to the culture.
One of them is the fear of man.
That's kind of what we addressed in the first couple of questions.
The other, I think, is very much what Sam said, which is a misguided compassion, a wicked pity, empathy.
I think these kinds of things, on one hand, people are, the hindrance is, I'm not going to speak the truth because of my image.
The fear of man.
I want to be praised by men.
I want the applause of men.
I want acceptance.
I want to be accepted by the culture, therefore, I cannot do something that would contradict or can be viewed as combative by the culture.
So, one is that fear of man, but the other, I think, genuinely is love.
It's just misinformed love, it's misguided compassion, it's empathy instead of actual sympathy and compassion.
It's what I'm going to be talking about later on, but it's a Pity in the worst ways.
Misguided Compassion Hinders Gospel00:05:09
It's wicked pity.
It's pitying.
I use this illustration all the time, so I'll use it here.
But the reason why Joker gets away with so much mayhem in Gotham is because Batman never puts him down.
He grabs him, subdues him, ties him up, hands him over to the police.
But at some point, it's like, all right, haven't we learned this lesson?
How many times has Joker broken out of prison?
How many times?
Would you just kill Joker?
Batman's pity of Joker is what ultimately lends towards Joker's destruction of so many innocent people in Gotham.
And people do not, they do not directly correlate the cause and effect.
So people say, I'm just trying to be compassionate towards the LGBT community.
And you know why people are speaking out now?
Because they finally have been able to connect the dots in God's providence.
They didn't do it theologically, they should have been able to, but they weren't.
The church was not able to.
But God, in His mercy, and this is a mercy of God, in His merciful providence, God has now forced the evangelical church to connect the dots between.
Compassion towards the LGBT community and drag queen story hour with their kids.
You know, one of the major voting blocks that has shifted in our nation towards voting conservative white women in suburban areas, aka soccer moms.
Right?
Those white women, many of them evangelicals, they just wanted to be kind.
We just want to be with the party of kindness.
Elon Musk came out and said, I voted Democrat because I thought they were the party of kindness.
And I now, for the first time in my life, am going to vote conservative.
And I'm not saying Republicans are great, you know, there's plenty of problems there too.
But my point is, I think one of the reasons why it's shifting is because people are now, for the first time, correlating pity towards perpetrators as a direct lack of pity towards those perpetrators' victims.
We just want to be kind towards criminals.
And then, boom, in the last two years 2021, 2022, New York can't ride the subway anymore.
Oh, I just thought I was being compassionate towards criminals.
I thought I was living out the gospel, right?
Isn't it all about grace and all about mercy?
Oh, but mercy to this person was a complete absence of mercy towards all the people that they were hurting.
There's a conflation of justice and gospel.
We have it's long gospel.
That, I think, is the problem.
People, Christians, one, it's the fear of man.
I want the culture to praise me.
But on the other side of the coin, and this is me giving the most benefit of the doubt to evangelicals as I possibly can, and primarily, I am going to say, primarily evangelical women.
Did you know we would not have one Democrat president in the last 50 years if women couldn't vote?
Women's suffrage has caused a lot of suffering for women.
I'm just saying, that's not popular, I understand, but I'm just saying, women tend to vote Democrat because women tend to be actually buy in to some of the lingo and some of the language of party of kindness.
But then the party of kindness that these women wanted to be compassionate towards started messing with those women's kids.
And all of a sudden, now we've got a bunch of conservative white women.
You know, those soccer moms, all of a sudden, they're ripping off that Biden sticker, you know, and maybe they're not fans of Trump, but DeSantis is on the back bumper or something like that.
And so I think one of the things we need to do is theologically, pastors have to teach the difference between law and gospel.
Law and gospel.
Law and gospel.
When it comes to the civil magistrate, when it comes to public affairs, when it comes to legislation, that is not.
Where we exercise the gospel.
That's where we exercise justice.
And justice is the black velvet backdrop that makes the gospel, the diamond of the gospel, shine so brightly.
Part of the reason the gospel is falling on deaf ears is because you cannot wow people with the love of God if they've never been taught the fear of God.
They've never been taught his law.
So grace is watered down.
Grace is weak if it doesn't have the backdrop of God's holiness.
And the civil magistrate that bears a sword and its job is not gospel, that's the church.
Its job is justice.
The civil magistrate is, in an ideal society, meant to serve as a tutor.
They legislate morality so that people understand justice, so that when they hear the message of God's mercy, it really, really connects.
It means something.
So I think theologically, long gospel, long gospel.
Pastors got to preach that.
And then I think also, and this is God's mercy again, but in God's mercy, providentially, the Lord is forcing people to connect the dots between pity towards the wicked.
Essentials Over Secondary Issues00:15:39
Empowers them to oppress the righteous.
We have not had to deal with that until the last few years.
We have been forced, it's like God has taken our heads and forced us to look at your quote unquote compassion towards this is directly affecting this group over here being oppressed.
And now I think one of the things that wins us over to holiness is God showing us the beauty of his holiness, but another thing is God showing us the true disgusting nature of sin.
Sometimes, what causes us to repent and turn from sin is when we actually see how destructive sin is.
And we're seeing that now.
So I'm hopeful.
I say all that not to be negative.
I think I'm hopeful.
Absolutely.
Last question What things would you say are non essentials that Christians can disagree on?
Now, everybody's going to answer this in some way differently, probably even us three up here.
But I guess the best way that I could say that in regards to my own church, our church, is in regards to membership.
Because that's really kind of where we draw the line and say, because if you're a member of a church, that church is affirming that you are indeed a Christian.
They're saying, we affirm that this person will stand with us when everybody else's heads are getting chopped off.
I hate to just.
Completely go there, but that's really where it's going to.
I spent most of my early adult life in the Middle East.
I've seen tyranny firsthand, and we're experiencing a soft form of tyranny.
People's heads aren't being cut off in the United States yet, but it's going in that direction, right?
So when I think about things that we have to affirm, well, we have to affirm the gospel.
If you get the gospel wrong, then you're not a brother or sister in Christ.
So, if you add to the gospel even good social action, you believe a false gospel.
We can't agree to disagree on that.
You have to acknowledge that there are going to be some things to where there's more mystery in the Bible than there is clarity, and people are going to argue whether or not there's this amount of clarity or that much clarity.
The fact that there are huge arguments over the amount of clarity, like eschatology, means that that's probably not a first order issue.
You shouldn't divide a church over that.
Now, where for me it gets to the point where I think secondary and first order issues, first order issues being gospel issues, specifically, do we believe the same gospel?
Second order issues, maybe being soteriology, but that fleshes into first order issues.
It's very important for us.
If you get those first two things right, and there's some room in the secondary things for somebody to be indifferent on, but if If you get the first one wrong, then one, you're just not a Christian.
And so I think we need to start with the gospel.
Everything else after that, there's some room for disagreement.
But if you get the gospel wrong, you get Christianity wrong.
I'm a Calvinist.
I'm reformed.
I'm Baptist.
I'm a cessationist.
I'm trying to think of other things.
You can disagree with me on those things.
You would be wrong, but you can disagree with me on those things.
But you cannot disagree with me, or I should say, you cannot disagree with God on what he says about the gospel, what he says about the Trinity, what he says about Christ's divinity and humanity.
You cannot disagree on the virgin birth.
You cannot disagree with him on his sinless, righteous life.
You can't disagree with his death on the cross, the atonement, how he is our substitute.
You can't disagree that through his death, if we have faith in him, we are declared righteous.
You can't disagree that he rose again on the third day.
You can't disagree that he ascended to heaven and that he is right now interceding for his saints and that he will return.
Now, you can disagree as to when or how, but you can't disagree that he will return.
You can disagree that he will judge the world.
You can't disagree with those things.
You can't disagree with what he says about sin.
If God says it's a sin, it's a sin.
But we can have disagreements about other things.
And even then, by the grace of God, even in our disagreements, we are still unified as a church.
Christ is gracious with us that even when some people who disagree with me are wrong, he still unifies us.
Right?
So that on this stage, we don't all agree on the same things, but we do agree on what God has said about Himself, about the gospel, and sin.
Do you have an answer, Mark?
Do you want to say something?
No, I would agree absolutely with how Samuel just outlined those essentials because that is the dividing line.
Those things are the dividing line, but I think we have to understand the gospel correctly.
If you start off with a faulty gospel, you're going to start off with faulty essentials.
And then you're going to turn non essentials into essentials when you don't have the gospel right.
And so I think we have to start with the gospel as he just walked us through.
So understanding the gospel, the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension of Christ, The Trinity, all of those things are absolutely essential, and you cannot give one inch, but we have to, with confidence, without wavering, stand unopposed to those things.
You can get into some things that are popular in evangelicalism, talking about how or when Christ will return, and get into those deep things of eschatology.
I think as I struggle with that right now and working through those intricacies with that, that is absolutely, in my biblical conviction, not an essential that would divide, as Pastor Mike says.
But the essentials have to start with the gospel, getting the gospel right.
And I'm afraid that a lot of people do not get the gospel right.
They don't understand the gospel, and therefore they don't lead with the gospel, and therefore they're silent about things because they don't understand the gospel correctly.
They're not prophetic to the culture because they don't believe Christ is king or lord, and therefore we have nothing to say to the culture in specific things, such as politics and academia and all parts of life where Christ will rule and reign.
And so the essentials are absolutely what Pastor Harding and Samuel have outlined for us.
But again, I think they just said in a more outline fashion, but I'm just putting the gospel over it, understanding the gospel correctly.
So, what we're talking about is theological triage, the prioritization of different doctrines.
You have primary, you have secondary, and tertiary.
Those are your primary three categories.
But it's important, I think, that Christians recognize that it's not just like three shelves, you have three categories, but then within each of these categories, Especially the secondary category, there are multiple shelves, meaning baptism, for instance, credo versus pedo.
Do we baptize the children of believers, infant baptism, or do we have a believer's baptism that we wait for a credible profession of faith?
That is a secondary issue.
Reformed or not reformed is also a secondary issue.
But one of those is still higher than the other.
What I mean is that both are within the secondary category.
But reformed or not reformed, right?
Having a reformed soteriology, I'm thinking of the five solas, I'm thinking of the tulip, you know, the doctrines of grace.
It's more important, I think, that somebody agrees on the doctrines of grace than we agree on the mode of baptism.
So, I would sooner, what I'm saying is, I would sooner, and that's without elevating the doctrines of grace into a first tier primary category.
Charles Spurgeon famously said, Calvinism is the gospel.
I know what he's saying.
I amen what he's saying.
However, I think it's better to say Calvinism is the most appropriate, biblically faithful framework for presenting the gospel.
And so, because if not, if we don't say that, then we're saying anyone who's not a Calvinist is a non Christian.
They don't have the gospel.
By rejecting the doctrines of grace, they have rejected grace itself.
And I'm not willing to go that far.
However, I would much sooner, if I was not a pastor and I'm looking for a church for my family to become members in and worship, I would much sooner go to a Presbyterian church as a Baptist and be a member there with my children than I would go to a Calvary Chapel church that's Arminian in their teaching of soteriology.
So I guess all I'm saying is just adding another piece to the puzzle that.
I think that sometimes we can oversimplify it.
With theological triage, there's primary, secondary, and tertiary.
And I think what a lot of Christians miss is that within these categories, especially that secondary category, there's multiple shells within that.
There are secondary issues that are more important, secondary issues, and then other secondary issues that are still secondary but less important, secondary issues.
And I think one of the reasons why we have musical chairs, we have a national, like a worldwide game of musical chairs in the evangelical church.
Being played right now.
What I mean is, you got people who, I'm not talking about the chronic, you know, discontented church hopper who goes to a church for three to six months and has been doing that for the last 20 years and is always bouncing and bouncing.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about you've got people who have been members in a church for 18 years.
They got married in that church, did their premarital counsel with the pastor, he officiated their wedding, they've dedicated their children in that church, all these different things, like for decades, and are now leaving their church.
And they're leaving over what technically would be secondary issues.
Because everything that they've said, I am in 100%.
But I think, my point is, I think what we're discovering is that some of these secondary issues matter a little bit more than we thought.
I think that it's been this common rhetoric that we say when we talk about theological triage, we say, you know, hey, like, there's primary and then there's secondary.
Secondary is not lastary.
We talk about secondary, there's gold and then there's rubbish.
No, no, no, no.
There's gold and there's silver.
Silver is not rubbish.
It may not be gold, but if you give me silver, I don't want to throw it away.
It matters.
And I think what we're realizing is that this silver category really matters because when you're in a foxhole, when you're in a trench, one of these secondary things is do you fight?
That's not technically primary, but it still really, really matters when all of a sudden the culture becomes not just indifferent but hostile, which it always has been.
Romans 8, the mind of the sinful man is indifferent towards God's law.
No, hostile at enmity with God's law.
We're just now seeing it.
It's now on the surface.
It's now visible.
That's always been the spiritual reality.
But now that the hostility is being acted upon in our culture, in our politics, in our media, we're realizing, oh man, this guy, I do agree on the gospel.
This guy, I'm not saying he's unregenerate.
I'm not saying he's a false teacher.
He is a brother.
And that primary category is actually, turns out, it's not enough.
I thought it would be enough.
It's not.
So I guess what I'm saying is, in terms of This cultural moment that we're currently in, I would say it's all the primary stuff.
That's your theology proper, doctrine of God, doctrine of the Word, inerrancy of Scripture.
It's the gospel, it's the Trinity, the nature of God, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, all these things life, death, resurrection, ascension of Christ, His glorious return.
All those things are primary.
It can never be less than that.
But I think there are moments in history where some of these secondary things become a non negotiable.
And I think the number one secondary thing that's a non negotiable right now.
Even above Reformed theology and the doctrines of grace, is will you fight?
And to make that really plain, it's the difference between the inerrancy of Scripture and the sufficiency of Scripture.
Being able to identify that this is a double edged sword and it's sharper than any other sword, it's able to divide between bone and marrow, that turns out it's not enough.
For me to partner with you, I need to know that not just that you will salute the sword, the Word of God, this is the Word of God.
I want to know that you will wield.
The sword, like the founders guys.
Like, if I've got four guys and we're united because all four of us, we sit in chairs in the living room with a nice, you know, roasting fire and there's a sword in a glass case above the mantel, and all four of us agree that is a sword.
In fact, we all four agree that's a fantastic sword.
It's a really sharp sword, it's a double edged sword, it's a great sword.
But we have unity when also all four of us agree that if an enemy bursts down the door as we're sitting in front of this toasty fire, Are all four of us willing to break the glass and grab that sword and swing it?
And a lot of guys that we thought were on our team have proven they know.
Like, they are sword analysts.
They will form study committees for swords.
They do not pick up swords.
That guy, he may be my brother in Christ in the final day, but that guy is not going to watch my six when we're in the trenches.
Unity Against Common Enemies00:00:21
Let's praise God for these men and this time together.
Thanks so much for listening.
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