Pastoral Ministry Panel Q&A - Tom Patton, George Crawford, Carl Hargrove, and Bill Shannon

00:00:00.940 | - Well, welcome gentlemen.

00:00:02.680 | We've had two days of tremendous preaching,

00:00:08.680 | tremendous singing.

00:00:10.760 | It is a joy to hear men sing who love Christ.

00:00:15.760 | - Amen.

00:00:17.720 | - And to be able to be with them.

00:00:19.840 | Now we've heard some great preaching

00:00:21.680 | on the topic of truth triumphs.

00:00:24.940 | Now we're gonna come down to implementing it.

00:00:29.640 | Truth triumphs, how do we live it out?

00:00:31.960 | Come on up Bill.

00:00:33.160 | How do we live it out down in the trenches?

00:00:37.360 | When you're hand-to-hand combat,

00:00:40.000 | when you're fighting spiritual forces of darkness?

00:00:44.180 | How are we going to work through that?

00:00:47.360 | So we're going to have a discussion.

00:00:50.140 | My name is George Crawford.

00:00:51.520 | I've had the privilege of serving as an elder here

00:00:54.080 | since 1996.

00:00:56.400 | We have a saying here that some of our elders

00:00:58.720 | are good for something and some of them

00:01:00.080 | are good for nothing.

00:01:01.180 | The former being guys who are on staff,

00:01:05.040 | the latter being guys who,

00:01:06.600 | using a very non-biblical term, are lay elders.

00:01:10.560 | I am one of the latter.

00:01:13.300 | With me, and I'm gonna ask the gentleman to give,

00:01:18.000 | in the interest of brevity,

00:01:19.820 | in the interest of a military carryover,

00:01:22.000 | name, rank, and serial number, starting with Mr. Hargrove.

00:01:25.680 | Carl Hargrove, one of the elders here,

00:01:29.480 | pastoral staff overseeing Grace Advance,

00:01:32.640 | and also faculty at the Master's Seminary.

00:01:36.560 | And what areas of ministry do you do here at Grace?

00:01:39.800 | Grace Advance is a ministry where we help churches

00:01:44.200 | in North America plant churches and revitalize.

00:01:47.080 | And also with Bill Shannon,

00:01:48.800 | pastor fellowship group here called Anchor.

00:01:52.960 | Some history with Grace Church, just briefly.

00:01:55.520 | I was sent out by Grace Church in 1993

00:02:00.520 | to plant a church, and did that for 20 years,

00:02:04.120 | and 10 years ago asked to come back.

00:02:06.620 | So I've been back here for 10 years now.

00:02:10.560 | I've been 20 years of ministry.

00:02:13.000 | - Tom?

00:02:14.040 | - Tom Patton, I'm a pastor here at Grace Church.

00:02:16.160 | I'm an elder as well.

00:02:17.360 | I also have a fellowship group that I pastor

00:02:19.520 | along with John Street, who's right over there

00:02:21.200 | talking as I'm talking, which is interesting.

00:02:23.600 | (laughing)

00:02:26.200 | He knows me, so he doesn't care.

00:02:28.160 | And been here for about 30 years.

00:02:32.620 | Since 1991 is when I came here, been on staff since 2001.

00:02:37.040 | And also teach at the seminary, I teach preaching there.

00:02:40.320 | And I'm a part of Grace Advance, of Carl's ministry as well.

00:02:44.360 | And we all kind of do a lot of things around here.

00:02:46.840 | We all wear a lot of different hats.

00:02:48.220 | But that's what I do.

00:02:49.060 | - We wear a multiplicity of hats.

00:02:50.480 | - We do.

00:02:51.320 | - One of the hats that Tom wears is that of Ranger Joe.

00:02:56.320 | - Yes, I should have brought my hat, sorry.

00:02:59.900 | - So if you want to catch--

00:03:02.920 | - Truly another hat.

00:03:03.760 | - Truly another hat.

00:03:04.720 | - Ranger Joe episodes, you can find them on Grace Media.

00:03:08.580 | - Yes, Grace Media app.

00:03:10.140 | - I've been telling him, Mr. Rogers, move over.

00:03:13.020 | (laughing)

00:03:14.640 | Tom is also the voice of Grace Church.

00:03:19.160 | Most of the time he is the emcee,

00:03:22.700 | if you would want to call it as such,

00:03:25.900 | for our morning worship service

00:03:27.300 | and even the evening worship service.

00:03:28.740 | And we're grateful for it.

00:03:29.580 | - It's a privilege.

00:03:31.020 | - Bill, have a seat.

00:03:32.420 | - First of all, I need to seek forgiveness.

00:03:35.420 | I got up here late, but I can't get through that courtyard

00:03:38.720 | without seeing an old friend.

00:03:40.260 | (laughing)

00:03:41.540 | And they're all old, I don't know why.

00:03:43.380 | (laughing)

00:03:45.180 | I've been here for 42 years at Grace Community Church.

00:03:48.800 | I've been on staff for 34 years now.

00:03:51.940 | And I oversee the counseling department

00:03:54.100 | here at Grace Church.

00:03:56.240 | We teach counseling.

00:03:57.860 | We try to train folks that can help with counseling,

00:04:01.940 | whether it be prayer room counseling

00:04:03.460 | or it be individuals in Bible study, whatever it is.

00:04:07.300 | That's what we do.

00:04:08.540 | As Carl has already told you,

00:04:10.860 | we co-pastor Anchored Fellowship Group.

00:04:14.020 | We take our own, somebody always asks me,

00:04:16.820 | "So, do you follow each other in the Bible?"

00:04:19.700 | No, we do our own thing.

00:04:22.440 | Because Carl doesn't let me tell him what to do.

00:04:24.700 | - Yeah.

00:04:25.540 | (laughing)

00:04:27.180 | He's tried.

00:04:28.220 | (laughing)

00:04:30.980 | All right.

00:04:31.940 | - That's my history.

00:04:32.780 | I have two girls.

00:04:34.420 | Both of those girls are married to fine men.

00:04:36.540 | One of them, my son-in-law's down in the main sanctuary,

00:04:39.700 | my competition right now, speaking there.

00:04:42.580 | And the other one is in Arizona,

00:04:44.660 | and he's the elder of his church that he goes to.

00:04:48.180 | - Yes.

00:04:49.020 | You can always tell a lot about a man

00:04:50.380 | by looking at what his adult children are doing.

00:04:53.020 | And there's been a history of faithfulness here.

00:04:57.020 | I work in the area.

00:04:59.660 | My secular world employment was as a prosecuting attorney.

00:05:04.000 | And as an administrative law judge,

00:05:07.260 | I taught part-time at Masters University

00:05:10.660 | for something like 30 years.

00:05:13.380 | Since I was able to walk away,

00:05:15.860 | I have been redeployed into ministry here.

00:05:19.180 | I serve on our Grace Advance team.

00:05:22.780 | That is one of the most important ministries we have here,

00:05:25.780 | and probably one of the least known ministries internally,

00:05:30.780 | and outside, most appreciated.

00:05:33.700 | I also serve on our missions board,

00:05:36.080 | Grace Missions International.

00:05:39.820 | We do everything we can to try to proclaim

00:05:43.620 | the word of God throughout the nations.

00:05:46.260 | Book of Malachi, my name will be great among the nations.

00:05:51.180 | So we passionately committed to that.

00:05:54.020 | Now, what are we wanting to accomplish today?

00:05:56.380 | Again, as I indicated earlier,

00:05:57.860 | we've heard some great preaching.

00:05:59.060 | Now we need to think through how it is

00:06:01.140 | that we can encourage ourselves in the process

00:06:05.820 | by wrestling with some challenging questions

00:06:09.460 | in 1 Timothy 3.15, Paul writes, he says,

00:06:13.240 | "I write so that you will know

00:06:14.820 | "how one ought to conduct himself

00:06:17.880 | "in the household of God,

00:06:19.160 | "which is the church of the living God,

00:06:21.660 | "the pillar and support, the buttress,

00:06:24.860 | "the bulwark of the truth."

00:06:27.560 | We are going to try to start off

00:06:33.300 | with some questions that we'll ask internally.

00:06:36.580 | Wanna get you to start thinking.

00:06:38.820 | I'm gonna have three somewhat abstract questions,

00:06:43.620 | and I'll move to three very practical questions

00:06:47.140 | that if you've been in ministry for any length of time,

00:06:50.540 | you've probably, to one extent or another,

00:06:53.220 | addressed these or thought about them.

00:06:57.740 | My son, Steve, who's in pastoral ministry in Kansas,

00:07:01.600 | was cautioning me that we need

00:07:03.700 | to include something like this.

00:07:06.420 | Then we're going to turn the mic over

00:07:09.100 | to questions from the floor.

00:07:11.820 | Make sure, and I've already asked the guys to screen them,

00:07:16.820 | make sure that if I ask you,

00:07:18.820 | "Is there really a question here?"

00:07:20.100 | you can answer yes.

00:07:21.340 | We all know of guys that come to the mic under Q&A,

00:07:25.300 | and they want to pose a statement.

00:07:28.180 | So make sure it's really a question.

00:07:29.980 | And we'll try to ask them, we'll try to get them.

00:07:33.480 | We want you to feel the freedom,

00:07:35.920 | to the extent you can,

00:07:39.480 | the freedom to be able to speak questions

00:07:42.820 | that are from the heart, that are really on your mind.

00:07:46.080 | We have an hour.

00:07:47.680 | We are more than willing to talk

00:07:50.880 | after the expiration of that hour,

00:07:53.080 | fully expecting, fully realizing

00:07:55.280 | that that may need to be done.

00:07:57.480 | So let's start with a word of prayer,

00:07:59.000 | and then we'll get going.

00:08:00.200 | Father in heaven, I want to thank you

00:08:03.240 | for each of these men, many of them I've not seen in years.

00:08:08.240 | Thank you for their commitment to Christ.

00:08:11.640 | Thank you for the love for your church

00:08:14.600 | that has brought them to this particular point.

00:08:17.340 | Father, we pray that men will be encouraged,

00:08:22.080 | they will be strengthened,

00:08:23.560 | they will be injected with iron,

00:08:26.540 | and a determination to continue serving

00:08:30.020 | as the foundation and bulwark of your truth.

00:08:34.360 | Guide us, Lord, in all we do today.

00:08:37.660 | We trust you, amen.

00:08:39.700 | Now, in keeping with the theme of the conference,

00:08:42.580 | as you think through the question, frame it.

00:08:45.500 | Keep in mind that it needs to be approaching the idea

00:08:49.220 | centered around the truth.

00:08:51.620 | So I'm gonna start this off with number one.

00:08:54.800 | (laughing)

00:08:57.040 | Technology.

00:09:00.120 | Over the last five to 10 years in our culture,

00:09:11.880 | in the church at large, and at Grace Community Church,

00:09:16.880 | where and how have you seen departures from

00:09:21.320 | or disobedience to the truth?

00:09:25.080 | - Oh my, five to 10 years?

00:09:28.400 | - Five to 10 years?

00:09:29.240 | - Of disobedience to the truth?

00:09:31.240 | And we have an hour.

00:09:32.680 | (laughing)

00:09:35.760 | Yeah, well, I think you go back to just that the truth.

00:09:40.120 | So all of the departures are gonna find their origin

00:09:43.880 | in a denial that there is an absolute truth.

00:09:46.680 | So I just think it's been manifest in different ways,

00:09:49.320 | whether it be manifest in how we understand gender,

00:09:52.460 | whether it's been manifest in how we understand

00:09:54.360 | a woman's role, a man's role,

00:09:57.200 | whether it's manifest in how we preach,

00:10:00.400 | whether it's manifest in what we believe about Christ.

00:10:03.720 | All of those things have an origin,

00:10:05.800 | and the origin is based in a denial of an absolute truth.

00:10:09.160 | You know, it's the question that Pilate asked,

00:10:12.720 | what is truth?

00:10:13.600 | Well, we have the definition for that,

00:10:16.400 | because the church, according to Paul's words to Timothy,

00:10:22.080 | the church is the pillar and support of a truth.

00:10:26.140 | Did it say that?

00:10:27.700 | No, the truth that we proclaim the gospel

00:10:32.220 | and all of its implications that come with it.

00:10:35.980 | So it's just the manifestations of disobedience are varying.

00:10:40.980 | - Okay.

00:10:41.860 | - Everything, like I said, from how do we understand a man

00:10:45.580 | to same sex attraction to the list goes on and on and on.

00:10:50.380 | But the basis of it is a denial of truth.

00:10:52.900 | - Yeah, I mean-- - And if you're not sure

00:10:55.840 | what truth is, Mark Zakevich is doing a seminar right now

00:10:59.040 | on the topic, if you wanna transfer.

00:11:01.320 | - You can leave now, that's fine.

00:11:02.960 | - Tom, you were gonna say something.

00:11:04.240 | - No, I was just gonna piggyback off of what Carl said.

00:11:06.360 | I think, you know, when you think of the culture,

00:11:09.600 | the departure from the truth is probably most manifested

00:11:12.280 | in the fact that they no longer really hold to a truth.

00:11:16.840 | They no longer really hold to some of the things

00:11:19.120 | we're used to.

00:11:20.600 | I'd say, generally speaking, it's more permissiveness

00:11:23.100 | in sin, that would be the general topic.

00:11:26.000 | Being more permissive, less guilt,

00:11:29.040 | even on a very superficial level,

00:11:30.640 | to feel any kind of restraint upon them.

00:11:33.720 | It says in the scripture that the Holy Spirit,

00:11:35.880 | in the days of the ban of lawlessness,

00:11:37.960 | will release his restraint.

00:11:41.000 | And so it seems as if that restraint is becoming less

00:11:43.440 | and less as time goes on.

00:11:44.980 | So without the particulars of how that looks in the world,

00:11:48.460 | I think my mind goes to how it looks like in the church,

00:11:51.780 | what it's been the big effect over the last 10 years.

00:11:55.340 | I remember when my dad was in the church as a young man,

00:12:00.340 | there was always a sense that maybe the church

00:12:02.200 | was more biblical back in the day,

00:12:04.360 | we're talking about in the '50s and '60s.

00:12:07.440 | But I've learned as time goes on,

00:12:08.920 | that's not necessarily the case, it was more masked.

00:12:12.320 | More and more, the church was kind of just being moral

00:12:15.840 | and trying to not really speak about things

00:12:18.720 | that were urgent, for instance.

00:12:20.920 | Church discipline, we think, or I used to think,

00:12:22.960 | was something that was a part of church history

00:12:25.040 | when my dad was growing up.

00:12:26.760 | I asked John MacArthur one time about that.

00:12:28.920 | He said, you know what, I don't remember church discipline

00:12:31.480 | even being in my father's church

00:12:33.120 | or the churches at his time.

00:12:34.840 | So this is something that, in some ways,

00:12:37.520 | we've come more advanced in some of our reformed circles

00:12:41.280 | to be taking the Bible more seriously.

00:12:44.360 | But you see more permissiveness in the culture,

00:12:46.720 | and I think you see, at least in our circles,

00:12:50.160 | more seriousness about the doctrines of grace

00:12:53.840 | and the truth of the scripture.

00:12:55.880 | So that's happening, but I know it seems,

00:12:58.100 | to some people who are looking at it

00:12:59.360 | maybe a little superficially, like this is an avalanche,

00:13:02.280 | and where is this all coming from?

00:13:04.000 | But it seems like the storm has been building

00:13:05.880 | for a very long time.

00:13:07.280 | So I think Martin Lloyd-Jones is the one that said,

00:13:10.600 | you know, I'm really never surprised

00:13:13.760 | because the Bible tells us that these things will happen.

00:13:16.560 | I'm not sitting in shock thinking, how can this be?

00:13:19.440 | But I think our people are in shock,

00:13:21.440 | and our people have to be fortified.

00:13:23.440 | And so one of the greatest things

00:13:24.880 | I think we can teach our people

00:13:26.520 | is this is not a surprise to God,

00:13:29.480 | and we can prove that by going to the scripture

00:13:31.600 | and showing that these things have been predicted

00:13:34.520 | from Jesus' day and before,

00:13:36.580 | and I think that's a helpful way to look at it.

00:13:38.640 | >> So we, to some degree, react to that

00:13:42.800 | by helping our people get past the shock,

00:13:46.120 | by helping them to realize that this is nothing

00:13:49.280 | that has taken God by surprise.

00:13:51.120 | >> Right, and I think they find comfort in their pastor

00:13:53.520 | having that kind of poise about the truth

00:13:57.440 | so that they're not seeing you shaken

00:13:59.500 | by the things in the world

00:14:00.760 | because you're rooted in the scripture

00:14:02.640 | and you know what our Lord has said

00:14:04.600 | and what the book of Revelation has said

00:14:07.420 | and the book of Daniel that we found out from Abner.

00:14:09.840 | These things are to make us shock-proof, if you will.

00:14:12.720 | We might be surprised, but we're not shocked.

00:14:15.720 | >> And to some degree, we help people

00:14:18.360 | by helping the weak, strengthening the weak,

00:14:23.120 | dealing with situations where people have been scarred.

00:14:27.200 | Bill, you wanna talk to that?

00:14:28.700 | By the loss of--

00:14:30.520 | >> This idea of what's coming into the church,

00:14:33.720 | I think is what's been in the culture for a while,

00:14:35.760 | is the cancel culture is starting to come into the church.

00:14:39.240 | Some of you men start to feel that pressure from people.

00:14:42.800 | That are not liking what you're doing

00:14:45.360 | or how the church is doing it and those kinds of things.

00:14:48.120 | And they bring those questions in all the time.

00:14:50.800 | Which has absolutely nothing to do with the truth,

00:14:54.400 | but they're hammering away at you ever so slowly,

00:14:59.340 | and I think that's part of what Satan's plan is,

00:15:01.480 | and he's using the people of God, even,

00:15:04.680 | to do those kinds of things.

00:15:06.500 | How do we help them, though?

00:15:08.140 | How do we help our brothers and sisters?

00:15:10.120 | And the only way to do that is through the truth.

00:15:12.600 | I think of 1 Timothy 1.5, the goal of our instruction

00:15:16.160 | is love from a pure heart, a sincere faith.

00:15:18.960 | That's the goal of our instruction.

00:15:20.840 | We need to keep teaching them, and teaching them,

00:15:23.440 | and teaching them, even when they don't listen.

00:15:25.920 | I can remember, not too long ago,

00:15:28.160 | receiving an email from a husband and wife,

00:15:31.240 | and the husband and wife wrote,

00:15:32.480 | "We are not listening to you in the counseling room."

00:15:36.000 | You're not the only one, is what I answered.

00:15:38.200 | (audience laughing)

00:15:40.240 | But that's what happens.

00:15:41.080 | - If Bill wanted to hear that,

00:15:41.960 | he could talk to his wife, Donna.

00:15:43.520 | - Well, I do listen to her.

00:15:45.740 | (audience laughing)

00:15:47.480 | But, I mean, that's part of what the people wanna do.

00:15:50.240 | They wanna throw back at you

00:15:52.240 | that you're not what you are saying you are.

00:15:56.000 | - Okay, great.

00:15:57.820 | Now, it's interesting that you mentioned Satan.

00:16:01.200 | In my own personal study, I've been reading

00:16:03.880 | Luther's commentary on the book of Galatians.

00:16:07.480 | Galatians 3.1, and this is from the NKJV.

00:16:11.120 | "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you

00:16:15.880 | "that you should not obey the truth,"

00:16:18.520 | and that's added in the King James and the New King James.

00:16:22.440 | You won't find it in the NASV or the ESV.

00:16:25.120 | "Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth

00:16:28.280 | "before whose eyes Jesus Christ

00:16:30.540 | "was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?"

00:16:34.560 | Any thoughts as to the extent to which this departure,

00:16:39.560 | this rejection of the truth, is due to the evil one,

00:16:44.280 | and how do we react to that?

00:16:47.400 | Thoughts on that.

00:16:48.240 | - Well, we know that society is under the god of this world.

00:16:54.480 | That's clear.

00:16:55.360 | That's why when a person comes to face 2 Corinthians 4,

00:17:00.760 | this veil is removed, but prior to it,

00:17:03.080 | they were blinded, their minds were blinded.

00:17:05.520 | So you say, well, their mind was blinded,

00:17:07.640 | because that's Ephesians chapter four,

00:17:10.600 | because they walked in the futility of their mind.

00:17:13.280 | They were darkened in their understanding.

00:17:15.880 | So we can see that there is an influence that is there.

00:17:20.160 | It's a spiritual influence.

00:17:22.180 | So if he's the god of this world,

00:17:23.560 | you're going to orchestrate the world

00:17:25.000 | in accord to your ultimate goal.

00:17:28.040 | The ultimate goal would be to thwart the plans of God,

00:17:30.240 | but we all know, praise God, that that cannot happen, right?

00:17:33.040 | Brothers?

00:17:34.120 | That can't happen.

00:17:34.960 | We know how it ends.

00:17:35.800 | Our God is victorious.

00:17:37.640 | But he is doing everything he can

00:17:39.400 | to disrupt God glorifying himself,

00:17:43.900 | which means operating through principalities

00:17:46.980 | and powers and higher entities in society,

00:17:51.480 | in politics, in culture, in religion itself,

00:17:58.440 | because every other religion,

00:18:00.880 | its backdrop is going to be the enemy,

00:18:04.360 | because he's the enemy of the souls of men.

00:18:08.020 | So that's where we come back to.

00:18:12.680 | Ultimately, the devil is, the scripture is clear,

00:18:15.240 | he is a liar, and he has been a liar from the beginning.

00:18:18.720 | - What passage is that from, Carl?

00:18:20.680 | - So John.

00:18:22.640 | - 844.

00:18:24.040 | Make sure, two things.

00:18:25.440 | He is a murderer, and he is a liar.

00:18:28.040 | And when he speaks, he speaks lies.

00:18:31.040 | It is his native language.

00:18:32.320 | Go ahead.

00:18:33.160 | - Which is the opposite of what we're talking about.

00:18:34.920 | Lies don't triumph, truth triumphs.

00:18:38.080 | So he will not triumph.

00:18:39.680 | The truth will be triumphant.

00:18:43.000 | So Christ told us that's his very nature to do that.

00:18:46.880 | So in society, we can say that the lies

00:18:50.680 | are propagated by the hand of the enemy.

00:18:55.560 | So we do battle.

00:18:56.560 | And this is why Ephesians chapter six tells us what?

00:18:59.640 | That we're not fighting against flesh and blood.

00:19:02.240 | This is why Paul said, even what we heard

00:19:05.840 | in the first message from 2 Corinthians,

00:19:09.120 | that these spiritual fortresses, we bring down.

00:19:14.120 | We bring them down with different weapons.

00:19:17.200 | And that weapon is the truth of God's word

00:19:20.760 | and his preaching.

00:19:21.600 | - Ultimately, the key approach is bringing truth to bear.

00:19:25.920 | - Tom, you had something in mind.

00:19:27.320 | You're looking for a passage.

00:19:28.320 | I can read that in your face.

00:19:29.160 | - No, I just noticed you were quizzing us,

00:19:30.320 | so I thought I might be prepared.

00:19:31.520 | (audience laughing)

00:19:33.840 | - Good man.

00:19:34.680 | - I'm reading that back, I didn't know.

00:19:38.240 | - You kind of already went through ordination, George.

00:19:41.040 | (audience laughing)

00:19:42.760 | - Always be ready to speak and give a defense

00:19:45.080 | of the hope that is in you, George.

00:19:46.400 | - Especially with George.

00:19:47.880 | - Go ahead, Tom.

00:19:48.720 | - No, I was just gonna say, in our particular context,

00:19:53.280 | because of the fact we are just down the street

00:19:55.640 | from one of the largest charismatic churches in California,

00:19:59.760 | we have dealt over the years with the fact

00:20:01.960 | that people have come and done a lot of confessing blame

00:20:06.880 | on Satan for their sin.

00:20:09.400 | And so instead of going to the book of James

00:20:12.540 | and speaking about, well, isn't that from the temptations

00:20:16.400 | which wage war in you, and isn't that also your own sin

00:20:20.160 | giving birth to that?

00:20:21.240 | And so we've had to kind of walk people back

00:20:24.880 | from emphasis on, as Sanford and Sons used to say,

00:20:29.120 | the devil made me do it, if you remember that.

00:20:30.780 | Some of you are not old enough to know that.

00:20:31.620 | - That was Flip Wilson, Tom.

00:20:32.960 | - Flip Wilson, excuse me.

00:20:34.480 | I defer, so I can't get the scripture right

00:20:39.200 | or the television program right.

00:20:40.840 | (audience laughing)

00:20:42.480 | But do you know the idea there is,

00:20:45.000 | that's a real thing that sometimes our church, I believe,

00:20:47.960 | can almost discount because we're trying to overcorrect

00:20:51.440 | from people who think that there's so much influence

00:20:54.120 | by Satan that the devil made me do it.

00:20:56.960 | So it's a balance that we walk.

00:20:59.660 | Years ago, people would come here

00:21:01.360 | and have just been so obsessed with the idea

00:21:05.660 | that Satan is guiding their every thought,

00:21:08.920 | even though they're believers.

00:21:10.280 | And we're saying that can't be true.

00:21:11.960 | You can be influenced, you can be harassed.

00:21:15.920 | Satan is powerful.

00:21:18.160 | You go to the book of Job chapter one,

00:21:20.520 | and you see with God's permission,

00:21:22.480 | he can do whatever God allows him to do.

00:21:24.800 | As Luther said, the devil is God's devil.

00:21:28.160 | And so that is something that we have

00:21:30.080 | to keep in balance here.

00:21:31.280 | So instead of overcompensating and trying to say,

00:21:33.960 | no, it's all just your sin,

00:21:36.320 | we have to have an appreciation for the fact,

00:21:38.040 | no, Satan is real, is the tempter.

00:21:40.920 | Even in the Lord's Prayer, many translations will say,

00:21:45.640 | keep us from temptation and deliver us from evil

00:21:48.800 | or from the evil one.

00:21:50.400 | - The evil one.

00:21:51.240 | - So you have to be mindful that there is a balance in that,

00:21:54.400 | and you're always kind of never wanting to discount

00:21:57.280 | the power of that creature, as was described earlier today,

00:22:02.120 | but also on the other side,

00:22:03.600 | not to de-emphasize someone's own sin

00:22:05.680 | for leading them into temptation.

00:22:07.760 | - Excellent, excellent.

00:22:09.120 | Bill, you wanna add anything?

00:22:10.200 | - Yes, I do.

00:22:11.560 | I'm thinking, I'm looking out here,

00:22:12.880 | and I see either men that are elders,

00:22:15.440 | men that are about to be elders,

00:22:16.920 | maybe men that are thinking they'd like to be elders.

00:22:20.260 | How do we protect the church?

00:22:22.760 | We have to know the truth ourselves

00:22:25.200 | in order to protect the church,

00:22:27.260 | 'cause you have people that come,

00:22:28.920 | that wanna become members even,

00:22:30.680 | and I've seen that at Grace Church,

00:22:32.440 | wanna become members and they can't give a testimony

00:22:34.880 | or they don't know the answer to some simple questions.

00:22:37.940 | That's how we protect the church.

00:22:39.960 | When we just give 'em a rubber stamp and let 'em in,

00:22:43.000 | all you're doing is letting in trouble.

00:22:45.080 | So you have to protect that church as much as possible,

00:22:48.440 | and that is not only just the preaching,

00:22:50.540 | but then when you're visiting with them,

00:22:52.460 | even one-on-one, wait a minute, that's not true.

00:22:55.640 | I had somebody give me a testimony once.

00:22:58.700 | He says, "Yes, when I was three or four,

00:23:00.780 | "I went to sleep and I believed I was in heaven.

00:23:03.400 | "I saw Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and I became a Christian."

00:23:06.940 | I knew right away he didn't become a Christian,

00:23:09.500 | 'cause he did not know what it meant

00:23:12.260 | to be a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

00:23:15.020 | So make sure of protecting the church first, right up front.

00:23:18.220 | - Acts 20, Paul writes to the Ephesian elders,

00:23:22.340 | "Keep watch over yourself, keep watch over the church."

00:23:26.700 | One of the most thought-provoking passages

00:23:29.540 | in all of the New Testament, he says,

00:23:30.860 | "From among yourselves there will arise men,"

00:23:34.500 | and these were men who he had discipled,

00:23:36.420 | these were men whom he had served with,

00:23:39.380 | prayed with, cried with.

00:23:41.500 | He says, "From among yourselves there will be men

00:23:43.520 | "who arise to pervert the truth,

00:23:46.960 | "to draw people away after themselves."

00:23:50.160 | We have to be vigilant against even that.

00:23:52.500 | Fantastic to point that out, Bill.

00:23:54.780 | If you want any more thought on this information,

00:23:59.800 | I would recommend, first of all, John's sermon,

00:24:03.520 | November of 2017, on this particular text, Galatians 3.1.

00:24:08.520 | Also, Luther on Galatians 3.1.

00:24:12.640 | We don't wanna make too much of it,

00:24:14.200 | but we do not want to ignore the reality of it.

00:24:18.420 | Now, we're living in a world, as a culture,

00:24:21.560 | we've talked about this already, Romans 1.25.

00:24:26.560 | We're looking at a world that has perverted good and evil.

00:24:32.100 | Isaiah 5.20, Malachi 2.17, people are saying,

00:24:37.180 | "Where is the God of justice?

00:24:38.740 | "Why isn't he doing anything about this?"

00:24:40.720 | They're calling that which the scripture says evil,

00:24:44.040 | they're calling it good, and they're doing the converse.

00:24:47.260 | How do we cope and respond to that within the church?

00:24:50.740 | I'll start with Bill,

00:24:51.880 | and then we'll work our way back to Carl.

00:24:53.920 | - Again, you still have to come back to teaching the truth.

00:24:57.840 | If you're just having coffee

00:25:00.960 | and just having those kinds of times,

00:25:03.000 | I think you need to be upfront with your people

00:25:05.400 | and teaching them all the time.

00:25:07.840 | That is what's, I think, most vital,

00:25:09.880 | is somebody came here and visited Grace Church.

00:25:14.240 | They took a walk around.

00:25:17.080 | They spent two weeks here.

00:25:18.880 | The guy came to me afterwards, and he says,

00:25:20.460 | "All you guys do here is teach God's word."

00:25:23.380 | (audience laughing)

00:25:25.480 | - And we say, "You have a problem with that?"

00:25:28.040 | - I looked at him, and I said,

00:25:29.020 | "Is there something else to teach?"

00:25:31.240 | Because, I mean, what do we have?

00:25:33.680 | The only thing that makes it valid right here

00:25:36.480 | is God's truth, and he's given it to us,

00:25:39.200 | and we need to continue to teach that.

00:25:41.800 | - And that, by the way, is the basis of all of our counsel.

00:25:45.800 | There is, at times, very subtle ways

00:25:49.920 | of trying to inject something else

00:25:52.480 | into being the basis of our counseling.

00:25:55.440 | No, we are from the scripture.

00:25:59.280 | We will not speak beyond what God has called us to say.

00:26:03.800 | Tom.

00:26:05.240 | - Well, just listening to what you were saying,

00:26:08.400 | the world does say what is evil is good,

00:26:11.480 | and we say that no, that's defined by scripture.

00:26:15.520 | So it does go back even to what Bill's talking about,

00:26:18.520 | which is to be known by being a man of the word.

00:26:22.320 | And what I've noticed is that it's very, very easy

00:26:25.880 | just to get into kind of practical,

00:26:27.920 | one-on-one discussion with your flock,

00:26:30.320 | social things, issues in life,

00:26:33.480 | and to try to kind of relate to them,

00:26:36.300 | and to stray away from just going to the Bible,

00:26:39.520 | because people might think, well, they know this,

00:26:41.840 | they've heard this, this is not something that,

00:26:43.720 | I just don't want to be a person

00:26:45.540 | that's like a Bible thumper, if you will.

00:26:47.580 | But in my experience, when you don't do that,

00:26:50.600 | at least at our church, and again,

00:26:51.880 | I haven't been anywhere in years and years,

00:26:54.480 | he's thumping the Bible,

00:26:57.440 | is that when we don't do that,

00:27:00.520 | people will literally criticize,

00:27:02.560 | and will sit there and say, you know what,

00:27:04.680 | so-and-so, I went to see him,

00:27:07.080 | and he didn't open up in prayer,

00:27:09.560 | he didn't direct me to passages

00:27:11.560 | with addresses assigned to them,

00:27:13.720 | all we did was talk about my issues,

00:27:16.280 | and I'm thinking, that happened here?

00:27:17.700 | That happened at Grace Church?

00:27:18.800 | So, don't be afraid to just open the Bible,

00:27:22.480 | in fact, in my office, if you come in,

00:27:24.580 | I just have a Bible that's already open

00:27:26.480 | on the other side of the table,

00:27:28.440 | and it's there so people don't even have an excuse,

00:27:31.280 | because if they don't bring their Bible,

00:27:32.660 | there's one right there, it's open,

00:27:34.200 | and then I have them read out the passage

00:27:36.960 | that I'm directing them to,

00:27:38.320 | because sometimes it's even more effective for me

00:27:40.400 | to have them hear their own voice speak God's word,

00:27:43.560 | than even me to speak it to them,

00:27:45.080 | so they have to actually take the time to do it,

00:27:47.340 | it's a simple little technique someone told me years ago,

00:27:50.120 | but again, it goes back to the question,

00:27:53.240 | how do you discern between what is good and what is evil?

00:27:55.880 | Well, there's only one way to discern it,

00:27:57.480 | and that is through God's word,

00:27:58.840 | and we believe that, but sometimes through time urgency,

00:28:02.520 | or just, I don't know, the desire to be,

00:28:06.440 | maybe if you have a small church,

00:28:08.040 | the desire to be more kind of a friendly,

00:28:12.640 | user-friendly kind of church,

00:28:14.240 | where you're not trying to quote-unquote judge them,

00:28:17.280 | that you might talk politics, you might talk philosophy,

00:28:21.040 | or whatever you might do,

00:28:22.420 | and you know it's not what they need,

00:28:24.640 | but you're trying to be relatable,

00:28:26.520 | I would just really say that the most relatable thing

00:28:28.960 | in the world is just cutting it straight,

00:28:31.260 | and cutting it straight with the Bible

00:28:32.760 | is the only option that we have.

00:28:34.640 | - Great, and Tom, Carl?

00:28:36.320 | - Carl, yeah, let's just kind of be direct here,

00:28:40.880 | it's the word of God, we all agree with that,

00:28:43.700 | that's why you came here with 5,000 other men

00:28:47.520 | to this conference,

00:28:48.480 | because you knew you would hear the word of God,

00:28:50.640 | so look at 1 Timothy with me,

00:28:53.080 | you would notice if you were to go through Timothy,

00:28:56.720 | I think it was like 13 places

00:28:58.760 | where you're going to see the doctrine

00:29:01.720 | either said specifically or by clear inference.

00:29:05.960 | Verse three, not to teach strange doctrines,

00:29:11.440 | so you're instructing, which means you're teaching.

00:29:14.260 | Verse five, the goal of our instruction,

00:29:17.920 | love, pure heart, good conscience, sincere faith.

00:29:22.000 | Notice verse 15, it's a trustworthy statement,

00:29:26.600 | deserving full, notice, full acceptance,

00:29:29.920 | full acceptance.

00:29:31.400 | Verse 17, this lofty theology of God,

00:29:36.400 | king, eternal, immortal, invisible, only God,

00:29:39.920 | glory and honor forever and ever.

00:29:42.640 | Look at chapter two, there in verse five,

00:29:47.440 | there's one mediator, God and man,

00:29:50.040 | this is teaching doctrine.

00:29:52.560 | Verse 13 and 14, Adam was first created,

00:29:56.400 | then Eve, the woman was deceived.

00:30:01.100 | Look at chapter three, verse one,

00:30:03.200 | it's a trustworthy statement, he says.

00:30:06.440 | Chapter 315, how you should conduct yourselves.

00:30:11.440 | Now, this is your behavior in the household of God,

00:30:15.480 | which is that pillar in support of the truth.

00:30:18.300 | Chapter four, verse one, let me tell you,

00:30:20.880 | the latter times, we've already talked about that.

00:30:23.720 | Expect it, this is what Tom was saying,

00:30:25.800 | expect it, the doctrines of demons.

00:30:28.280 | Again, there is doctrinal misappropriation error

00:30:33.280 | in the church, who's behind it?

00:30:35.640 | Well, the scripture just says demons are.

00:30:38.880 | So verse six, the words of the faith

00:30:43.160 | and the sound doctrine which you've been following.

00:30:46.400 | Verse nine, trustworthy statement.

00:30:48.800 | Verse 11, prescribe and teach these things.

00:30:51.800 | Verse 16, pay close attention to yourself

00:30:55.160 | and to your teaching, he says, and then it ends,

00:30:58.160 | I think the last one is chapter six, verse two.

00:31:01.180 | Teach and prescribe and preach these principles.

00:31:06.180 | Pretty convincing, at least for me it is.

00:31:08.360 | - All scripture is inspired by God.

00:31:12.160 | We read that in 2 Timothy 3.

00:31:14.700 | And yet, there is a sense in which those of us

00:31:18.480 | who are in leadership find ourselves again and again

00:31:22.000 | and again in the pastoral epistles.

00:31:24.000 | In fact, I came across a quote in none other than Augustine,

00:31:29.000 | which says if you have any position of leadership,

00:31:32.320 | the pastoral epistles need to be continually

00:31:35.640 | before your mind.

00:31:36.600 | So I appreciate you mentioning 1 Timothy,

00:31:40.080 | 2 Timothy, and Titus.

00:31:41.520 | Don't let them get out of your thinking, ever.

00:31:44.780 | We're gonna have three questions,

00:31:47.800 | and then we're gonna try to, what's that?

00:31:50.560 | - The timing.

00:31:51.400 | - Yeah, three questions.

00:31:52.680 | - Time's running out.

00:31:53.560 | - Number one, pastor, my wife has just been diagnosed

00:31:58.560 | with fill in the blank, incurable disease of some sort,

00:32:02.360 | Alzheimer's, ALS, whatever it is.

00:32:05.480 | How do I cope with that?

00:32:07.200 | How does the truth come to bear on this?

00:32:10.120 | Bill?

00:32:12.720 | - Again, you're going to go to trusting God.

00:32:17.120 | Some have had that, heard those words, trust God.

00:32:22.120 | I was in a foreign country and heard those words, trust God.

00:32:30.880 | That's what you have to believe.

00:32:34.000 | - Very quickly.

00:32:34.840 | - I'll defer.

00:32:36.800 | - Well, I mean, something like that.

00:32:40.880 | There's so many different nuances,

00:32:43.680 | but ultimately, you first start with their faith.

00:32:47.080 | Are they really believers?

00:32:48.400 | And I know that seems like such a,

00:32:51.160 | it can become such a difficult thing at times.

00:32:54.960 | You have somebody in your church for a long time,

00:32:56.800 | and they're going through a hardship,

00:32:58.540 | and as you look at that, you might sit there and go,

00:33:01.040 | well, let's go back over first the truth

00:33:03.520 | before we get into the particulars of your situation.

00:33:06.580 | Yes, of course, this is hard,

00:33:08.220 | but what does God teach us about our faith?

00:33:10.220 | What does God teach us about perseverance?

00:33:12.000 | And you might find out oftentimes that,

00:33:14.680 | I mean, you know that there's goats and sheep in your flock.

00:33:17.320 | You know there's no question.

00:33:18.520 | And after you establish that,

00:33:20.740 | they sometimes will come to the realization

00:33:22.700 | of what their faith is, and therefore,

00:33:24.520 | those obstacles become not so incredibly difficult anymore

00:33:29.520 | because they realize it's the burden

00:33:31.720 | of suffering like Christ.

00:33:33.160 | And if they are believers, then you can get

00:33:35.520 | into the specific application of, yes, like you said,

00:33:39.560 | trusting the Lord with all your heart,

00:33:41.100 | leaning not on your own understanding.

00:33:43.200 | I taught through the book of Job for 60 messages,

00:33:47.960 | and at the end of the book, as you know,

00:33:50.640 | Job through the whole time is complaining

00:33:53.240 | and lifting his fist and is being barraged

00:33:56.560 | by all these different teachers giving him the implication

00:33:59.720 | that he was the one that sinned,

00:34:00.920 | and therefore, this is why this has happened.

00:34:02.760 | And at the end, God comes in in the famous monologue,

00:34:07.440 | longest portion of God speaking in the Bible,

00:34:09.880 | and he never gives him an answer.

00:34:11.480 | He never tells him why.

00:34:12.680 | He never tells him why his family was destroyed.

00:34:15.360 | He never tells him why his health was devastated.

00:34:17.800 | He never tells him why everything was taken from him.

00:34:20.360 | He just says, I am God, and where were you

00:34:22.760 | when I did all of this?

00:34:24.480 | And that's a lesson.

00:34:25.720 | That's a lesson that I've actually taught to people

00:34:28.120 | in the hospital when their little girl was sick

00:34:31.740 | and has a form of cancer, and the in-laws have come

00:34:34.720 | into town and were speaking about that.

00:34:36.640 | And I say because God says the answer to the issue

00:34:39.480 | is I am God.

00:34:40.880 | And then we'd have to go down the elevator with them,

00:34:43.880 | walk them to their parking space, and they're silenced

00:34:46.800 | because they don't even want to talk to me

00:34:48.520 | because they think I've been so insensitive and so harsh

00:34:51.440 | because I didn't give them an answer

00:34:52.920 | other than what the scripture says,

00:34:54.480 | which is we submit to God.

00:34:56.280 | This is God's will, and we know he's righteous and good,

00:34:59.200 | and there is no answer other than trust him.

00:35:02.160 | So it puts us in a situation where making sure,

00:35:05.160 | first, they're saved to the degree that we can,

00:35:07.960 | and then administering the truth,

00:35:09.720 | and then actually being prepared for being misunderstood

00:35:13.240 | and just prayerful and hoping

00:35:15.080 | that the Lord softens their heart.

00:35:16.720 | >> Can I say something to this? >> Yes, go ahead.

00:35:18.560 | >> I think this is important, too.

00:35:20.780 | Truth triumphs.

00:35:21.620 | We're hearing a lot of excellent preaching

00:35:23.960 | about these things.

00:35:25.720 | We are men who believe truth.

00:35:28.000 | But as a pastor, learn that you don't always

00:35:30.360 | have to give an answer.

00:35:32.260 | >> True.

00:35:33.100 | >> Here's something else you can do.

00:35:34.400 | Someone comes to me, and I've had it before,

00:35:36.280 | and I've had this particular pastoring for those 20 years.

00:35:39.720 | I don't have to have a solution.

00:35:41.400 | Silence can be ministry for someone.

00:35:44.940 | Hold their hand.

00:35:46.880 | I'm there with you.

00:35:49.640 | Don't think that somehow you have to walk them through

00:35:52.200 | what I just walked through in 1 Timothy.

00:35:55.640 | Then you're an expositor now because you've given them

00:35:58.320 | all these wonderful biblical answers.

00:36:01.160 | Be quiet for a while.

00:36:03.200 | Cry with somebody for a while is what you need to do.

00:36:06.520 | >> That's the best thing that Job's friends did.

00:36:08.720 | The only good thing they did.

00:36:09.920 | >> Yeah, exactly.

00:36:11.760 | Yeah, so be careful, guys, in thinking that,

00:36:14.880 | so, okay, I'm a believer in truth.

00:36:17.920 | Okay, I've got a Romans, what, Romans 8:28.

00:36:20.360 | I've got a good job.

00:36:21.200 | I've got to do this.

00:36:22.020 | I have to say that.

00:36:22.860 | I have to say that.

00:36:24.000 | No, just, what are you feeling?

00:36:27.200 | >> We have an Alzheimer's support ministry

00:36:29.480 | here at Grace Church.

00:36:31.220 | We've had people who have gone through that route.

00:36:35.020 | We've had families that deal with it.

00:36:36.700 | We've been meeting for about something like 11 years.

00:36:40.140 | We've seen something like 20 people.

00:36:43.340 | We took stock this week to try to think through.

00:36:46.460 | When you get this kind of word,

00:36:48.220 | you will become a theologian, one way or another.

00:36:51.900 | You will either be a theologian that is solidly biblical

00:36:56.900 | and right and good, or you'll be a bad theologian.

00:37:00.060 | You'll be blaming God.

00:37:01.140 | One way or another.

00:37:02.740 | So, focusing on truth is sometimes extremely important.

00:37:07.460 | We've looked at the reality of aging.

00:37:10.240 | This last time we met, we looked at the importance

00:37:14.180 | of being created in the image of God, the imago dei.

00:37:17.060 | How is it that we treat the individual,

00:37:20.980 | the family who's going through that?

00:37:22.380 | We remember that they are in the image of God.

00:37:25.100 | We remember the reality of the fall.

00:37:28.300 | Truth helps.

00:37:30.580 | Sometimes it's the only help that you're going to have

00:37:33.740 | when you're going through that crisis.

00:37:36.280 | Next question, pastor.

00:37:38.820 | And this is actually a pastor who's giving the question.

00:37:41.900 | I've given everything I've had, I could,

00:37:45.540 | to the sermon I just preached.

00:37:47.780 | Time away from my family, time away from my kids.

00:37:51.360 | I worked hard into the evening.

00:37:54.260 | I poured out my heart, and I go into the office

00:37:58.860 | on Monday morning, and I've got half a dozen emails

00:38:02.960 | from people who listen to me,

00:38:04.380 | and they're just ripping me apart.

00:38:06.200 | Or you could change the scenario and say,

00:38:10.040 | I've been counseling this couple

00:38:12.320 | for the longest period of time.

00:38:14.160 | Now I open up the newspaper, or I turn on the internet,

00:38:19.200 | and I see my name being just ripped to shreds.

00:38:22.100 | Never thought of that.

00:38:23.300 | Never thought of that.

00:38:24.420 | How does truth triumph?

00:38:29.260 | How does truth help you to cope in that?

00:38:32.220 | Tom.

00:38:33.040 | - I'm gonna do something a little bit different here.

00:38:39.000 | I, not that I don't know the answer,

00:38:41.380 | 'cause I'm just gonna do what Carl says and be silent.

00:38:42.780 | - Giving Bill time to think.

00:38:43.980 | - No, no, no, no.

00:38:45.340 | - I don't know the answer, Tom, so please.

00:38:47.300 | - I would, I really want to, I'm not trying to forgo it,

00:38:50.500 | but I think we only have like 20 something minutes.

00:38:52.740 | I want to hear from you guys.

00:38:54.260 | I want to hear questions that you have,

00:38:55.660 | and if that's your question, I'd love to answer it,

00:38:57.860 | but I'd love to know what's on your all's hearts, too.

00:39:00.180 | So when you come for a question and answer,

00:39:01.740 | I want it to be at least partially towards you as well.

00:39:04.800 | Is that okay?

00:39:05.660 | So do you have a question?

00:39:06.860 | If you could walk up to the mics

00:39:08.100 | and ask something for us for the last 20 minutes

00:39:10.640 | so that we can, I want to know what's on your heart,

00:39:13.900 | and if your heart is about those emails,

00:39:16.220 | then I'd just say be silent, be kind.

00:39:19.820 | The longer the email, the shorter the response.

00:39:21.800 | That's what I say.

00:39:22.640 | - All right, so we've got an answer.

00:39:24.380 | I was gonna overrule the brother.

00:39:26.860 | - That's the answer.

00:39:27.700 | - All right. - There you go.

00:39:29.100 | - Committed to Christ.

00:39:30.980 | - All right.

00:39:31.860 | - Thank you.

00:39:32.700 | - I wanted to know how Grace Church

00:39:34.340 | handles a divisive person, or identifies a divisive person

00:39:38.740 | versus somebody that's hard to handle.

00:39:40.740 | And especially, too, if they want to come back

00:39:43.700 | to your church, is there a re-matriculation?

00:39:49.660 | And as far as the, when they first come to Grace Church,

00:39:53.480 | I've heard good that they don't have to subscribe

00:39:57.320 | to everything in the doctrinal statement perfectly,

00:39:59.920 | 'cause you want to give people

00:40:01.280 | that are new to the scripture more time.

00:40:03.640 | This church is by me in New York,

00:40:05.080 | where they have the 1689 Confession,

00:40:06.960 | and you gotta subscribe to it

00:40:08.840 | as soon as you come to the church.

00:40:10.080 | So speak to those issues for me.

00:40:12.420 | - Gentleman?

00:40:13.260 | - I think for the divisive person, if I may speak to that,

00:40:15.880 | I mean, Titus 3.10, they would be put out of the church.

00:40:19.560 | - Some of the characteristics?

00:40:20.540 | - Yeah, that person who is divisive, you know, divisive.

00:40:23.580 | What is a divisive person?

00:40:25.340 | They would be calling up others

00:40:26.980 | and saying the pastor did this,

00:40:28.380 | or the pastor's wife did this,

00:40:29.780 | or they're talking about the doctrine then.

00:40:32.260 | They could be divisive with the doctrine.

00:40:34.340 | Those kinds of things, they should be put out of the church.

00:40:37.180 | Matter of fact, we did it in one week once,

00:40:39.640 | where the fellow said that on a Sunday,

00:40:41.300 | and next Sunday he was gone.

00:40:42.980 | Because you don't want the church to be divided.

00:40:45.660 | That's one thing.

00:40:46.580 | How do you get 'em back?

00:40:48.100 | How do you get 'em back?

00:40:49.180 | That's gonna take some time.

00:40:51.380 | The elders are gonna have to sit down with him

00:40:53.420 | and talk with him, or her, and work through the issues.

00:40:56.580 | It's not just one sitting that you spend 15, 20,

00:40:59.740 | an hour minute, an hour with them.

00:41:02.100 | You need to spend time, because you wanna make sure

00:41:04.560 | the person that's coming back

00:41:06.180 | actually knows what they did wrong-going.

00:41:08.260 | And some of 'em don't understand that sometimes.

00:41:12.620 | They can have doctrinal differences.

00:41:14.260 | You know, if you wanna believe in certain things,

00:41:17.560 | that's okay, there are certain key doctrines

00:41:21.460 | that they must believe.

00:41:23.060 | It's like, I had this couple for counseling once,

00:41:25.940 | and I asked for their testimony.

00:41:27.500 | He's like, "Al, give me your testimony."

00:41:28.820 | And I'm in my mind going, "I don't know."

00:41:30.860 | The guy gave me his testimony, and they said,

00:41:32.540 | "But I don't believe that Jesus is God."

00:41:34.660 | I said, "You just made that easy for me.

00:41:37.180 | "You're not a Christian."

00:41:39.460 | I mean, I did that immediately.

00:41:40.860 | He said, "You're not a," he started arguing.

00:41:42.940 | I said, "We'll get to that, okay, we'll get to that.

00:41:46.020 | "We'll talk about that."

00:41:47.360 | But you obviously have a terrible marriage.

00:41:50.020 | Let's work on that a little bit.

00:41:51.420 | But let's get that.

00:41:53.220 | You understand, you're not a Christian.

00:41:55.100 | So I think those are the kinds of things.

00:41:56.740 | - Guys, wanna add to anything?

00:41:57.580 | - Well, you asked a question about re-matriculation.

00:42:00.780 | If they're repentant, sure.

00:42:03.700 | But what Bill is saying, observation based on

00:42:06.420 | the gravity of why they left, and that may take longer,

00:42:11.420 | could be a shorter period of time,

00:42:14.780 | based on how repentant they are.

00:42:16.740 | We wanna restore, Galatians, we wanna restore.

00:42:19.400 | We wanna set the bone in order again.

00:42:21.680 | But we have to look out for the flock.

00:42:24.720 | - Factious and divisive conduct, by the way,

00:42:27.000 | is recognized as a public sin.

00:42:28.840 | Calvin points this out, that will require quicker action

00:42:33.840 | to protect the flock on the part of the elders.

00:42:36.440 | - A lady once said to me that she didn't believe

00:42:39.160 | although we believe the grace.

00:42:40.280 | I said, "What do you believe that we don't?"

00:42:42.120 | She said, "Speaking in tongues."

00:42:44.760 | I said, "Well, you can become a member still."

00:42:47.340 | She wanted to become a member.

00:42:48.460 | "But you just don't go around professing that as doctrine."

00:42:52.300 | Three years later, she walks up to me,

00:42:53.780 | she says, "Well, I believe like you do."

00:42:54.940 | I said, "Can you please tell me what I believe?"

00:42:57.660 | I want you to tell me and articulate that.

00:42:59.740 | And she said, "Well, I realize speaking in tongues

00:43:02.500 | "is not something for today."

00:43:03.820 | - Sure, if we can make the distinction,

00:43:06.240 | we believe that if you're part of the body of Christ,

00:43:08.340 | you, at least in theory, should be able to be a part

00:43:11.580 | of our church, a member of our church.

00:43:13.660 | That does not mean that you're going to be asked

00:43:15.840 | to teach a Bible study or lead a fellowship group.

00:43:20.680 | - Yeah. - Okay.

00:43:21.520 | - All right, thank you.

00:43:22.340 | Over here, Chris. - Over here, Chris.

00:43:24.020 | - Hi, thank you.

00:43:24.860 | - There we go.

00:43:27.620 | - Hi, I had a question in...

00:43:30.180 | - Okay. - Okay.

00:43:33.740 | - In a conference about truth triumphs,

00:43:36.060 | there's definitely big theological differences

00:43:38.540 | between John MacArthur and John Piper.

00:43:40.500 | So, and then you have another category

00:43:42.540 | of like Romans 14 issues of conscience issues.

00:43:44.900 | So, how do you stand for the truth dogmatically,

00:43:47.980 | but also leave the door open for disagreements

00:43:51.740 | on other matters and then disagreements on conscience issues?

00:43:54.740 | - Well, something that it's kind of alluded to

00:43:57.600 | by the first man's question as well is,

00:44:00.300 | we have a statement here that's been very specifically

00:44:03.300 | called what we teach, not what we believe,

00:44:07.360 | because we have thousands of people here

00:44:09.660 | that might believe different things.

00:44:11.580 | But this is what we teach from the pulpit.

00:44:13.420 | So, that's a very important distinction right off the bat.

00:44:15.860 | So, yes, there's differences

00:44:17.460 | between John MacArthur and John Piper.

00:44:20.760 | And we used to joke about the fact

00:44:22.620 | when R.C. would come here and preach

00:44:24.260 | that we'd love to have him come here and preach,

00:44:26.640 | but he wouldn't join the church

00:44:28.860 | because he wouldn't want to join our church

00:44:31.060 | because we wouldn't let him teach.

00:44:33.220 | So... (audience laughing)

00:44:36.220 | And he wouldn't want to

00:44:39.460 | 'cause there's no way he'd wanna join a church

00:44:41.260 | that wasn't a preterist.

00:44:42.980 | Anyway, so, but the point being is,

00:44:45.840 | so we can, as Bill said, as Carl has alluded to as well,

00:44:49.600 | you can come here and believe our soteriology,

00:44:52.860 | you can believe different aspects

00:44:54.380 | of the doctrine of sin, et cetera,

00:44:58.220 | but when it comes to some things,

00:44:59.300 | and it's always eschatology and it's always the gifts,

00:45:01.740 | that's what it boils down to.

00:45:03.260 | Sometimes it has to do, lately,

00:45:04.940 | with some aspects of the atonement,

00:45:06.980 | but usually it's those two things.

00:45:08.460 | Then we try to say we're all in process of learning.

00:45:13.460 | If you have a teachable spirit,

00:45:15.520 | I think this might be what you're asking, I'm not sure,

00:45:17.980 | then you can, of course, be here

00:45:20.140 | and we wanna come alongside.

00:45:21.420 | If you become divisive

00:45:22.700 | or you wanna teach a Bible study, like we said,

00:45:25.340 | or you want to make your stand,

00:45:28.660 | then you're not gonna be happy here.

00:45:30.740 | Why would you be here?

00:45:31.580 | You wanna go someplace else.

00:45:32.700 | People go, well, you're the only Reformed church

00:45:34.620 | that's in the neighborhood or in the area, maybe the state,

00:45:37.460 | and we're sitting there saying, well, that might be true,

00:45:40.820 | but can we just agree, while you're here,

00:45:43.180 | on those things, like the deity of Jesus,

00:45:46.020 | like the doctrine of atonement,

00:45:49.060 | and not major on those things that are secondary

00:45:52.420 | until they become primary in your mind

00:45:54.340 | and then we have to address them.

00:45:56.140 | And that takes a lot of sensitivity

00:45:58.700 | to the nuances of that.

00:46:00.060 | That's not a hard and fast thing.

00:46:01.920 | That's through hours of counseling and talking to people

00:46:05.020 | and trying to be sensitive to that.

00:46:06.720 | - 1 Corinthians 15 talks about matters of first importance.

00:46:11.560 | And you mentioned Romans 14,

00:46:13.180 | and you can see some of the matters outlined there

00:46:16.100 | that we would probably not consider

00:46:18.180 | to be of first or primary importance.

00:46:21.100 | Next question, over here.

00:46:22.620 | - Yeah, I would love to know from each one of you,

00:46:26.020 | just like, y'all have been doing pastoral ministry

00:46:27.980 | for so long, and I'm pretty young, I'm 24,

00:46:31.980 | and I'm just curious why each one of you

00:46:35.200 | has done pastoral ministry

00:46:36.660 | and why you have chosen to stay in it for so long.

00:46:40.700 | - Oh, well, that's fairly simple in one sense.

00:46:45.380 | It's a calling.

00:46:46.300 | It's a calling.

00:46:48.700 | My life was on a very different pathway

00:46:51.300 | when I was in college, and the Lord saved me

00:46:55.020 | and totally changed my career thought,

00:46:57.500 | things that I was gearing to do since I was about so tall,

00:47:02.140 | and I could not ignore it.

00:47:04.580 | And so it sought me out, and then what happened in life

00:47:09.420 | is that there was a transference of what I was desiring

00:47:14.340 | into now what I desired.

00:47:16.620 | And that desire now overwhelms me, and it keeps me.

00:47:21.620 | And as Paul would say,

00:47:24.580 | "The love of Christ controls him."

00:47:27.540 | So now, because it's been shed abroad in our hearts

00:47:31.260 | and shed abroad in my heart,

00:47:33.140 | now I am, like Paul would say to Timothy,

00:47:36.660 | "No soldier in active service entangles himself

00:47:41.020 | "in the affairs of everyday life

00:47:43.040 | "so that he may please the one who enlisted him."

00:47:46.900 | So now that I've been enlisted as a new soldier,

00:47:49.340 | because that's what I wanted to do,

00:47:51.180 | make a career in the military,

00:47:52.580 | and I was headed down that path,

00:47:54.540 | the Lord says, "No, you will fight another type of battle."

00:47:59.000 | So why do I remain?

00:48:00.220 | Because I'm still enlisted.

00:48:02.100 | (audience laughing)

00:48:04.220 | And the problem with the soldier,

00:48:05.940 | there's something that's called AWOL.

00:48:07.740 | You cannot go AWOL, which means you're away without leave.

00:48:14.260 | And the only leave that I'll get is heaven.

00:48:17.280 | So that's it, I'll do this as long as I can.

00:48:20.900 | It may not be in the same capacity, but I'll still do it.

00:48:24.660 | - Have any former Marines in here?

00:48:26.380 | Marine Corps motto?

00:48:29.040 | - Simplify. - Simplify.

00:48:30.980 | - What's it mean?

00:48:32.640 | - Always faithful. - Always faithful.

00:48:33.820 | - That's right. - Yes.

00:48:35.260 | - Okay. - For myself in 1982,

00:48:38.420 | I got saved to Montreal, Canada on a business trip.

00:48:42.220 | And I had no idea what that meant, getting saved.

00:48:44.800 | I mean, I had no idea what it meant, reading a Bible.

00:48:47.140 | I had never seen one before.

00:48:48.940 | All of those kinds of things.

00:48:50.240 | And instead of divorcing my wife

00:48:52.380 | when I was coming back home to California,

00:48:54.500 | which I was going to do,

00:48:56.500 | so I gotta find out how to be a husband.

00:48:58.780 | I gotta find out how to be a father.

00:49:02.120 | I gotta learn how to do all these things.

00:49:04.220 | So I got somebody to start speaking into my life,

00:49:07.300 | right here at Grace Community Church.

00:49:09.460 | By the way, the lady in Canada's pointed me to this church.

00:49:13.620 | So that's what I did.

00:49:15.260 | And when I was meeting with this man,

00:49:17.780 | he poured his life into me.

00:49:19.460 | He taught me these things.

00:49:21.740 | And so when these master seminaries started,

00:49:25.540 | I said to my wife, "I think I've been called."

00:49:29.780 | She says, "I don't know how to play the piano."

00:49:32.340 | (congregation laughing)

00:49:34.660 | I said, "Don't worry about the piano."

00:49:36.380 | She said, "But I don't have a flower dress."

00:49:38.000 | - We'll get you lessons.

00:49:38.840 | (congregation laughing)

00:49:40.980 | - And she said, "I don't have a flower dress."

00:49:42.740 | I said, "I can take care of that."

00:49:44.500 | But that's what, and why do I stay?

00:49:47.260 | I stay because I see God's people being helped.

00:49:50.980 | I see people getting saved.

00:49:52.980 | Stop from getting a divorce, stop from doing sin.

00:49:56.380 | I love to see that.

00:49:58.040 | And my wife and I rejoice with that regularly in our home

00:50:01.780 | on a Sunday afternoon when we have people over.

00:50:04.140 | - Tom?

00:50:07.180 | - Well, first of all, what a great question

00:50:08.580 | from a 24-year-old. - Yeah, that's right.

00:50:10.540 | - And I pray that that's on your heart.

00:50:12.260 | I'm sure that's why you're asking the question.

00:50:14.620 | I wanted to be a pastor when I was five years old.

00:50:18.300 | The only problem was I wasn't saved till I was 30.

00:50:20.540 | (congregation laughing)

00:50:23.960 | So I think for me it's been trying to catch up

00:50:30.620 | for lost time. - Sure.

00:50:32.740 | - But honestly, if you have a heart for people,

00:50:35.460 | you're gonna be, just to be full disclosure,

00:50:37.940 | you're gonna be hurt, you're gonna be wounded.

00:50:40.060 | There's a lot of disappointment.

00:50:41.740 | In fact, I'd say the closer sometimes you feel

00:50:44.500 | that you're getting to a breakthrough with someone,

00:50:47.360 | the quicker you can find out that they will malign you,

00:50:50.360 | turn from you, and then-- - Sure.

00:50:52.460 | - It's very painful at times.

00:50:54.260 | But there are those moments where God supports you

00:50:58.420 | in your own soul and in prayer,

00:51:00.500 | and also from others coming alongside from time to time.

00:51:03.440 | In fact, just real quick, I was just getting my coffee.

00:51:06.660 | This is such a funny thing.

00:51:07.820 | And this young man comes up to me, he says, "Pastor Tom."

00:51:11.580 | And I said, "Yes," he goes.

00:51:12.940 | He goes, "Well, time has certainly been hard on you

00:51:15.820 | "the last 10 years." (congregation laughing)

00:51:18.820 | I said, you know, "Bless you, brother.

00:51:21.380 | (congregation laughing)

00:51:23.320 | "Be warm and be filled and get out of my way."

00:51:25.060 | No, I didn't say that. (congregation laughing)

00:51:27.380 | And it kind of threw me,

00:51:29.180 | 'cause I've never had that compliment.

00:51:31.020 | And he said, "I was in your preaching lab 10 years ago,

00:51:36.020 | "and when I came up to preach, you told me to sit down

00:51:40.000 | "and come back only when I was prepared."

00:51:42.380 | And I'm thinking, that's why he said that.

00:51:44.220 | (congregation laughing)

00:51:45.060 | And then he said, "Thank you so much for telling me that,

00:51:47.640 | "because I wasn't ready."

00:51:48.980 | So sometimes it takes a while for that to come,

00:51:51.540 | and that encouraged, 10 years for me.

00:51:54.060 | Of course, by God's grace, I didn't remember who he was,

00:51:56.860 | 'cause I blocked those things out.

00:51:58.720 | (congregation laughing)

00:51:59.780 | But so-- - And Tom, you still don't.

00:52:01.660 | - Yeah, but what an encouragement,

00:52:04.300 | and I pray for your encouragement.

00:52:06.620 | - I was in college, and I distinctly remember the evening.

00:52:10.380 | Somehow or other, one evening, the passage, John 21,

00:52:14.940 | "Feed my sheep."

00:52:16.420 | You know, the three times repeated phrase,

00:52:20.340 | just began to drum itself into my mind,

00:52:22.380 | and I have never fully been able to get that out of my mind.

00:52:27.020 | And that, I think God used to start pointing me

00:52:30.740 | in the direction.

00:52:31.820 | I'd been a preacher's kid, and yet, at that point in time,

00:52:35.760 | it started moving me in the direction.

00:52:38.260 | It takes a while to be able to see

00:52:39.740 | how it all gets implemented, but that passion is there,

00:52:43.980 | that realization, Acts 20, the Holy Spirit,

00:52:48.000 | despite the fact that some men connive themselves

00:52:50.140 | into the position, the Holy Spirit makes men elders.

00:52:54.740 | And when we are put in that position, we stay at our post.

00:52:57.980 | Semper fi.

00:52:58.820 | - One last thought, real quick, though, before he leaves.

00:53:01.340 | Spurgeon's lecture to my students--

00:53:03.300 | - I just bought it today.

00:53:04.300 | - Okay, on calling.

00:53:06.340 | He has a great section on calling.

00:53:08.140 | - And I'll tell you what else, since about calling,

00:53:10.260 | something that impacted me when I first came

00:53:12.260 | to the seminary, Albert Martin, the call to the ministry.

00:53:17.020 | Wow, every man should listen to that.

00:53:21.180 | The call to the ministry, Albert Martin.

00:53:23.220 | - And if you start listening to Albert Martin,

00:53:25.060 | you wonder whether you should go into the ministry.

00:53:27.100 | - Yeah, you're right.

00:53:29.220 | - We got a brother over here.

00:53:30.500 | - Brothers, thank you for your wisdom.

00:53:33.780 | I have a question.

00:53:34.620 | So, you know, when you get saved, right,

00:53:36.700 | you start reading the Bible, and this is amazing, right?

00:53:39.180 | You start learning and growing,

00:53:40.580 | and then you start discovering all these different truths

00:53:44.220 | and theologies and just deepening that, right?

00:53:47.220 | And then, you know, 10 years will pass.

00:53:48.820 | You've read your Bible every year.

00:53:50.540 | You've read your Bible 10 years, 10 times, 20 times,

00:53:54.820 | maybe 30 times, and sometimes you kind of get

00:53:57.780 | the curse of knowledge where you know

00:53:59.940 | what the next page is gonna say.

00:54:01.260 | You know what the next chapter contains.

00:54:03.060 | You've preached through it, right?

00:54:05.040 | How do you prevent it from just being,

00:54:07.980 | I'm reading this to preach, to serve,

00:54:10.500 | but I'm reading it for my soul, for my spirit.

00:54:13.020 | How do you rekindle that?

00:54:14.540 | - Sure, yeah, that's a great question.

00:54:16.340 | You know, I teach a course at the seminary.

00:54:19.020 | It's an elective.

00:54:20.180 | It's called Pastoral Holiness.

00:54:22.620 | And we address the issue of how does one maintain

00:54:27.300 | a spiritual life in the ministry.

00:54:30.220 | And one thing is that you have to take care of your own soul.

00:54:33.380 | There has to be a delight.

00:54:36.820 | You have to cherish the Lord.

00:54:39.220 | You have to believe what the psalmist did

00:54:43.220 | in Psalm 37 and four, delight yourself in the Lord.

00:54:47.060 | You have to believe what the psalmist said in Psalm 27,

00:54:50.280 | that he wants to behold the beauty of God

00:54:53.500 | and the gaze at his beauty in the temple.

00:54:56.740 | There has to be that sense of I need my soul

00:54:59.500 | to be nourished for my people.

00:55:01.680 | So one reason you do it is not simply

00:55:04.700 | for an academic exercise and even to prepare a servant.

00:55:09.700 | You do it because first, you are a child of God.

00:55:12.640 | Before I had a call to the ministry,

00:55:15.660 | I was simply a child of God.

00:55:17.560 | And so I have to nurture my life just as a child.

00:55:22.380 | And what happens with preachers, they can learn too much

00:55:26.060 | and they forget what is absolutely important,

00:55:29.520 | which is first, I'm his child.

00:55:33.460 | Let me behave like a child.

00:55:35.580 | Let me sit at the feet of my father.

00:55:39.220 | Let me cherish Jesus Christ and his death.

00:55:42.100 | Let me be appalled if I preach on hell

00:55:47.860 | and I don't have, like Whitfield said, tears in my eyes.

00:55:51.460 | Let me be like an Owen who said

00:55:54.540 | when he felt a sense of worldliness,

00:55:57.360 | that he would read like just 40 chapters of the Bible

00:56:01.020 | because he felt worldly.

00:56:03.020 | And this is Owen as well with his communion with God.

00:56:08.020 | So we do this out of communion with the living God

00:56:11.940 | because of a relationship.

00:56:13.960 | And so it's not just another page.

00:56:17.300 | It's not just another sermon.

00:56:19.940 | This is a relationship that you're nurturing

00:56:22.900 | with the living God.

00:56:24.540 | And we have to keep that in front of us.

00:56:26.260 | - Tom?

00:56:27.100 | - I just think exactly what he said.

00:56:30.140 | But to add to that, when you're saying

00:56:32.860 | I'm just preparing sermons and I get dry,

00:56:35.340 | you know, the big thing that I deal with,

00:56:36.700 | 'cause sometimes on a Saturday,

00:56:37.940 | I'll listen to six or seven sermons that I have to critique.

00:56:41.260 | My whole Saturday is called Sanctification Saturday.

00:56:44.460 | (laughing)

00:56:45.540 | And it's just sermon after sermon.

00:56:47.460 | And my number one critique many times

00:56:49.820 | is not their exegesis,

00:56:51.100 | is not the fact that they didn't get the point,

00:56:53.220 | but the fact that they speak it

00:56:54.940 | as if it's some kind of flat, unaffected.

00:56:57.580 | And so my question always goes back to them.

00:56:59.380 | I go, how much time did you spend really grappling

00:57:03.100 | with your own heart in this text?

00:57:05.780 | So you might be giving sermons every week,

00:57:08.860 | but, and they may be biblical,

00:57:11.540 | but you're not really allowing yourself.

00:57:14.060 | I think John MacArthur says he has two positions

00:57:15.860 | when he studies, either this position or this position.

00:57:19.460 | He's either here or here.

00:57:21.500 | And I said so many people don't spend enough time

00:57:23.700 | with their back contemplating their own life in the text.

00:57:27.660 | I don't know about you guys,

00:57:28.500 | and I'm not trying to make anything about me,

00:57:30.340 | but I cry every time I prepare for a sermon

00:57:33.260 | because I'm a rotten sinner

00:57:35.460 | that needs God's grace every moment of my life,

00:57:37.780 | and I'm ready.

00:57:38.620 | So if you can go through a sermon and be dry,

00:57:41.180 | what's the old saying that Moody said?

00:57:43.220 | This book will keep you from sin,

00:57:44.940 | and sin will keep you from this book.

00:57:47.340 | And so just remember that

00:57:48.940 | and allow God to break your heart down

00:57:51.860 | because otherwise you might be effective in word,

00:57:54.900 | but not in heart.

00:57:56.500 | And I think your people can tell that, too,

00:57:59.060 | but God obviously knows.

00:58:00.380 | - Sheldon.

00:58:01.740 | - You know, a gentleman once said to me

00:58:03.860 | that I study the word of God

00:58:05.580 | because I get paid to do that.

00:58:07.180 | He did, and I said, well, it's priceless.

00:58:11.420 | So you study the word of God because it's priceless.

00:58:14.860 | I'm gonna learn more.

00:58:15.860 | I'm gonna grow to be the man of God that he wants me to be.

00:58:18.900 | And I know I'm not the man of God

00:58:21.140 | that he wants me to be yet.

00:58:23.020 | And so I study for that reason.

00:58:25.860 | Now, when you hit Leviticus,

00:58:27.100 | you go, why am I reading this?

00:58:28.740 | Yeah, there's a reason for reading it.

00:58:31.300 | You see God's exactness.

00:58:32.620 | You see God's masterfulness in putting things together.

00:58:36.820 | That's what you have to see is another aspect of God.

00:58:39.380 | It's not always the same.

00:58:41.300 | And so see it for those kinds of things

00:58:43.380 | that it can just give you a different picture of who he is.

00:58:46.700 | - One of the things that I love most about our pastor,

00:58:49.580 | he has been pastoring for 55 years.

00:58:53.860 | He was a preacher's kid.

00:58:55.260 | He grew up.

00:58:56.620 | He still is excited about finding new things.

00:58:59.980 | And that is manifest for those of us

00:59:02.380 | who have the chance to be close to him and to talk to him.

00:59:05.300 | As a practical matter, you're gonna laugh when I say this,

00:59:08.580 | allow yourself the luxury of periodically buying a new Bible.

00:59:12.460 | Sometimes it's enjoyable just to be able to look at that,

00:59:17.020 | get lost, think about the texture,

00:59:19.500 | but then focus on the words.

00:59:21.660 | Regardless though, I'm gonna take you back

00:59:24.220 | to what Paul tells Timothy, 2 Timothy 3.

00:59:29.060 | And it's actually in the imperative mode, verse 14.

00:59:34.180 | "As for you, you must continue.

00:59:38.380 | "You must continue in what you have learned

00:59:40.720 | "and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it

00:59:44.720 | "and how from childhood you have been acquainted

00:59:47.860 | "with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise

00:59:52.100 | "for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ."

00:59:54.500 | We do not have the option of not continuing

00:59:58.180 | in the study of the words.

01:00:00.100 | Pray that God will enlighten your minds.

01:00:03.380 | Pray that God will show you.

01:00:05.920 | We have the expression at times in our culture,

01:00:08.060 | stay hungry.

01:00:09.300 | Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.

01:00:11.860 | It's an ongoing present reality.

01:00:13.940 | Stay hungry.

01:00:14.780 | Do we have any other questions?

01:00:16.620 | - We have one more here. - It's okay.

01:00:17.980 | - All right.

01:00:21.060 | Aside from the scriptures, for you as pastors,

01:00:23.620 | what would be the one book that you would commend

01:00:26.300 | to all of the pastors? - Oh, great question.

01:00:28.860 | Bill?

01:00:29.980 | - Depends upon what week you're talking about.

01:00:32.260 | - Yeah. (audience laughing)

01:00:34.220 | - I read lots and lots of books.

01:00:37.340 | One of 'em, "The Power of Christian Contentment"

01:00:40.060 | just recently has touched my heart.

01:00:42.840 | I've fallen in love with that.

01:00:44.560 | But I also like to read biographies.

01:00:47.660 | - Yes.

01:00:48.580 | - And so I'm reading those kinds of things.

01:00:51.580 | I've got one now about a guy called R.C. Sproul.

01:00:55.740 | We've been talking about him before,

01:00:57.020 | and I'm reading that, that Nichols put together.

01:00:59.980 | And so I'm always reading.

01:01:01.460 | I've always got something.

01:01:02.840 | And then the war with children just came out,

01:01:05.580 | a war against children just came out,

01:01:07.300 | and I'm reading that as well.

01:01:08.780 | So I just like to read.

01:01:10.940 | - Is there one particular book

01:01:12.820 | that you have read in your life

01:01:14.780 | that stands out as perhaps the most important thing

01:01:18.620 | you've read outside of the Bible?

01:01:20.060 | - Outside of the Bible, whatever I'm reading.

01:01:23.260 | I mean, it's just, I gotta leave it there

01:01:25.300 | because I have so many that I've been through.

01:01:30.000 | If you wanna talk about missions, I've got books.

01:01:31.740 | You wanna talk about history, I've got books.

01:01:33.340 | And that's, well, I'll leave it there.

01:01:35.260 | - Okay.

01:01:36.220 | Tom.

01:01:37.700 | - Boy.

01:01:38.540 | - Let's get to Tom, and then we'll get to you.

01:01:39.380 | - Are you Tom?

01:01:40.200 | I don't know.

01:01:41.040 | - Yeah, oh boy, he's thinking about me.

01:01:42.580 | No, without a doubt, it's the Martin Lloyd-Jones' book,

01:01:46.260 | "Sermons on the Mount."

01:01:48.260 | It is, I've gone through that so many times.

01:01:51.260 | I discipled men through that book.

01:01:53.260 | If you wanna have your heart reacquainted

01:01:56.700 | with the most famous sermon our Lord ever gave,

01:02:00.140 | go to Martin Lloyd-Jones.

01:02:02.420 | It is priceless.

01:02:03.780 | It is so rich.

01:02:05.660 | So I can't commend that enough.

01:02:07.500 | That's the book I always go back.

01:02:08.960 | Because even just going through the Beatitudes,

01:02:11.280 | your heart will get refreshed and convicted,

01:02:14.540 | and you'll start to just meditate, and it's wonderful.

01:02:17.860 | - Fantastic. - Wow, that's hard.

01:02:19.700 | Whitfield, about Dalamore.

01:02:24.300 | - Oh yeah, biography.

01:02:25.860 | - Yeah, biography.

01:02:27.940 | Yeah, theological, going all the way back

01:02:31.420 | to my young days in the faith, knowing God.

01:02:33.900 | Yeah, Packer.

01:02:36.460 | Great impact on me.

01:02:40.100 | For me, the book, the one book that has had

01:02:42.560 | probably the most overriding influence over the years,

01:02:45.560 | what are you gonna guess I'm saying?

01:02:46.800 | - Calvin's Institute.

01:02:47.720 | - You got it, absolutely.

01:02:49.760 | - I know this man.

01:02:50.800 | - And read both the first one and the last one.

01:02:55.100 | In the first one, he's fire all the way.

01:02:58.580 | A sense of humor that you couldn't use today.

01:03:02.420 | In his last edition, reasoning precise, deep, intense.

01:03:09.380 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:03:10.220 | - Martin Lloyd-Jones did a course of reading

01:03:15.780 | that I had stumbled into myself without realizing

01:03:18.140 | that the doctor had recommended it.

01:03:20.160 | You read, recommend a book of doctrine,

01:03:23.740 | maybe a selection of sermons,

01:03:25.740 | a commentary on a particular book,

01:03:28.020 | alternate that with a book of biography,

01:03:32.020 | a great man in the history of the church,

01:03:34.660 | Dalamore's Biography of Whitfield.

01:03:37.220 | - It's just unbelievable.

01:03:38.580 | - Two volumes set, if you look close enough,

01:03:42.040 | you'll find a great abuse of church discipline.

01:03:45.100 | Dalamore writes about how Wesley disciplined a woman out

01:03:49.280 | because she did not respond to his romantic overtures.

01:03:52.000 | Sense of humor, but you'll see how truth gets ironed out.

01:03:58.240 | - Don't try it, guys.

01:03:59.360 | - Don't try it.

01:04:00.200 | (audience laughing)

01:04:01.640 | - Yeah, let's not have you come back next year.

01:04:06.020 | But how truth gets ironed out over the course of time.

01:04:11.020 | Read the biography of Athanasius,

01:04:13.600 | some of the history of the church,

01:04:16.460 | and then go back to another book on church doctrine.

01:04:19.880 | Studies in the Sermon on the Mount is fantastic.

01:04:24.160 | But go back and forth.

01:04:26.620 | Make sure you know the Puritans.

01:04:28.620 | - Amen.

01:04:29.460 | - Okay? - Yeah, amen.

01:04:30.600 | - Let's see, tell me a choice of,

01:04:32.660 | top recommended Puritan, let's give me a choice of names.

01:04:35.580 | - Sibbes.

01:04:36.420 | - Sibbes. - Yeah, Richard Sibbes.

01:04:37.340 | - Yeah.

01:04:38.180 | - Watson.

01:04:39.000 | - What's that?

01:04:39.840 | - Watson. - Watson.

01:04:40.680 | - Okay.

01:04:41.500 | Owen. - Owen.

01:04:42.340 | - Owen, you want to read the abridgments?

01:04:43.660 | Okay.

01:04:44.500 | (audience laughing)

01:04:45.500 | Let's close in prayer.

01:04:47.020 | Father in heaven, again, Lord,

01:04:48.700 | I thank you for each of these men.

01:04:50.300 | Thank you for the fun that we've had this afternoon.

01:04:53.140 | Thank you for their passion for Christ.

01:04:56.060 | Father, I pray that your hand of blessing,

01:04:57.980 | chastening, and direction would rest upon each of them.

01:05:01.120 | Father, may we be found faithful.

01:05:03.580 | May there be none of us who would in any way

01:05:06.500 | bring disgrace or disrepute to the gospel of Christ.

01:05:10.760 | We love you and we thank you, Lord, for the privilege.

01:05:13.420 | We look forward to the day when we hear you say,

01:05:17.320 | well done, good and faithful servant.

01:05:19.580 | Enter into the joy of the Lord.

01:05:21.300 | Father, thank you for this privilege.

01:05:24.660 | Guide us in all we do through the rest of the day, amen.