When Evangelical Leaders Toy with Truth
00:00:00.000 | We're back with Dr. Russell Moore of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission filling in
00:00:09.000 | this week for John Piper.
00:00:10.720 | Not surprisingly, Dr. Moore, we're seeing a surge of evangelicals who have come out
00:00:14.620 | in support of so-called same-sex marriage, including Christian organizations, missions
00:00:19.240 | agencies, churches, denominations, prominent pastors, recording artists, musicians, and
00:00:24.240 | authors, etc.
00:00:25.240 | I'm sure in the months ahead, a pro-gay marriage book will be endorsed by a Christian
00:00:29.600 | leader who will surprise us.
00:00:31.560 | Tweets, interviews, YouTube clips will surface and surprise us with the words of some unlikely
00:00:36.680 | teachers that we thought we knew.
00:00:38.960 | In light of all of this, what advice would you give ordinary Christians when these out-of-nowhere
00:00:43.160 | controversies in the church blow up in their Twitter feeds?
00:00:47.800 | That's a really good question, and I think you're right.
00:00:50.360 | We are going to see more and more people within evangelical Christianity starting to capitulate
00:00:57.880 | on some of these core issues.
00:01:00.200 | I think what some people are doing right now is gauging what the landscape is like.
00:01:07.200 | I mean, look at—there's always this sort of figure in evangelical life who is out on
00:01:15.400 | the edge questioning key Christian doctrines, but doing so in a kind of ambiguous way.
00:01:23.120 | And then typically at some point or other, that person has to forthrightly state what
00:01:28.160 | he or she believes.
00:01:30.160 | And once that happens, once that is an actual denial of some biblical doctrine, that person
00:01:37.200 | then loses his or her audience.
00:01:40.800 | We've seen that just over and over and over again.
00:01:43.200 | So I think there are some people who are gauging, "How far out there can I get on some of
00:01:48.920 | these issues before I lose my place in evangelicalism?"
00:01:53.840 | And so that's going to happen.
00:01:55.520 | And I think we need to make sure that we have a different attitude toward sheep and toward
00:02:02.880 | shepherds.
00:02:04.600 | Jesus is never shocked by what He encounters among the sheep, among people, among those
00:02:11.840 | who are the lost that He came to save.
00:02:14.800 | There is no sense of being offended and surprised.
00:02:20.000 | The woman at the well, He encounters her with what her sin is.
00:02:23.720 | He recounts that to her.
00:02:26.080 | And so there's a sense of brokenheartedness and a sense of gentleness toward those who
00:02:34.000 | are sheep without a shepherd, as the Bible says.
00:02:36.960 | But there's a much sharper sort of tone that is used by Jesus and the apostles toward those
00:02:43.200 | who put themselves in the place of shepherds, as James would say, those who are held to
00:02:48.660 | a higher account because they are teachers.
00:02:51.680 | I think we have to do the same thing.
00:02:53.980 | We have to have a very different tone with that lost person in our community that we're
00:02:59.280 | sharing the gospel with from the way that we would respond to someone who is sitting
00:03:03.440 | in a place of authority, teaching as though with the authority of Christ, something that
00:03:09.040 | is not only true but that can destroy people's eternal salvation.
00:03:14.240 | So we need to keep two different tones working.
00:03:17.400 | First thing that we need to do when that sort of thing shows up on our Twitter feed or Facebook
00:03:22.640 | is to make sure that it's true.
00:03:24.880 | One of the things that happens is we tend to think sometimes that people are just ideas
00:03:32.160 | if they're sort of celebrities and we don't know them.
00:03:35.920 | So we tend to believe everything that is said.
00:03:39.200 | And sometimes there are reports that aren't true.
00:03:42.360 | People twist something that someone said or people put a different spin on it than is
00:03:48.920 | what is actually there.
00:03:50.160 | We need to make sure that it's true.
00:03:51.600 | And so we investigate that, we see that.
00:03:54.920 | Secondly, I think we ought not to be shocked.
00:03:58.000 | There are always going to be false teachers and then there are also always going to be
00:04:04.600 | people who aren't false teachers but people who make errors.
00:04:09.480 | So there's a difference, for instance, between Judas Iscariot, who is not even a Christian,
00:04:15.760 | he doesn't even know the Lord, and he's a son of perdition but is pretending as though
00:04:20.720 | he is.
00:04:21.720 | He's there among Jesus' disciples.
00:04:25.040 | There's a difference between Judas Iscariot and, say, Simon Peter, someone who also denies
00:04:30.840 | Christ, someone who even after he's restored makes the critical error, a gospel-denying
00:04:39.160 | error of refusing to eat with Gentiles.
00:04:41.880 | Paul rebukes him and he backs down.
00:04:44.920 | We shouldn't be surprised that that's going to happen.
00:04:48.000 | But we shouldn't be thrown by that.
00:04:50.680 | The apostle Paul tells us there are going to be those who are teaching things that are
00:04:55.800 | contrary to the gospel.
00:04:57.600 | But notice what he says to Timothy.
00:04:59.920 | He says, "Like Janus and Jambres," those magicians that were opposing the work of Moses, "they
00:05:06.360 | will not get very far."
00:05:08.360 | And so we ought not to be despondent, we ought not to be gloomy, we ought not to be everything
00:05:13.320 | slouching toward Gomorrah.
00:05:15.200 | We expect it and we call it what it is when it is seen.
00:05:19.580 | But we do that by giving room for repentance.
00:05:23.360 | Now you think about this, the apostle Paul withstood Peter to his face about that matter
00:05:29.960 | of table fellowship with the Gentiles, and Peter repented, he turned around.
00:05:36.160 | We ought not to see people as sort of cartoon characters out there that aren't people who
00:05:44.000 | can still respond to rebuke and respond to repentance, and we need to give people the
00:05:48.960 | ability to do that.
00:05:51.040 | I remember having a conversation with a pastor friend one time, and he was saying to me,
00:05:56.840 | trying to think through the issue of same-sex marriage, and he said, "What if we just were
00:06:01.320 | to make a deal where we'll just say, 'You all can have same-sex marriage out there in
00:06:09.000 | the civil arena, and we're just going to make sure that we have biblical marriage within
00:06:14.080 | our own churches, and we're just having coffee.'"
00:06:16.560 | And I said, "Well, that won't work, and here's why that won't work."
00:06:20.260 | And I kind of walked through with him why we wouldn't be able to make that deal, and
00:06:25.560 | why it would be wrong to try to make that deal.
00:06:28.000 | And he said, "I see what you're saying."
00:06:29.580 | And it occurred to me later that if he had been on the radio or on a podcast or some
00:06:35.880 | other venue and said that, he probably would have created a firestorm, and he may not have
00:06:42.920 | even had the opportunity to then back down and to say, "You know what?
00:06:46.920 | I was wrong."
00:06:47.920 | And that's especially true because so many of us in our sinfulness, and I count myself
00:06:53.580 | really high on this list, it's really hard once people start attacking you to then turn
00:06:59.420 | around and say, "Let me reconsider this.
00:07:01.380 | Maybe I was wrong."
00:07:02.380 | We need to give people the room to be able to do that.
00:07:07.500 | And then finally, I think we need to model how to be courageous while at the same time
00:07:13.260 | being overheard.
00:07:14.260 | I mean, when one thinks about the different sorts of ways that Jesus and the apostles
00:07:21.260 | speak to different audiences, Paul speaks to the church at Galatia really, really sharply,
00:07:28.380 | and he speaks to the church at Philippi really gently.
00:07:32.580 | We're in a situation now because of social media where we're speaking to multiple audiences
00:07:37.820 | all at the same time.
00:07:39.700 | So we have to figure out how to rebuke and to sharply rebuke false teaching while at
00:07:45.420 | the same time recognizing that we're going to be overheard by lost people.
00:07:50.760 | We're gonna be speaking to shepherds who are in error, but we're also going to be heard
00:07:55.560 | by sheep that Jesus sent us to seek and to call out towards salvation.
00:08:02.420 | And so to keep that in mind in whatever it is that we post, whatever it is that we say,
00:08:07.380 | whatever it is that we write.
00:08:08.820 | Thank you, Dr. Moore, for this wise gospel-centered counsel.
00:08:12.460 | Dr. Moore serves as the eighth president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
00:08:16.300 | of the Southern Baptist Convention, and he'll be joining us this week filling in for John
00:08:19.860 | Piper.
00:08:20.860 | You can keep up with Dr. Moore and the ERLC at erlc.com.
00:08:25.140 | Well, as Christian culture continues changing and we see some massive ethical shifts taking
00:08:30.540 | place and as culture secularizes, what is the church to do?
00:08:35.420 | What opportunities will we have?
00:08:37.340 | That's tomorrow.
00:08:38.340 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:39.340 | Thanks for listening to the Aspester John Podcast.
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