Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 487 | Jase Can't Believe Zach Dasher’s Shocking Info & Phil Warns Against Worldly Friendship

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Zach Dasher shares a survey of the church's modern-day beliefs, and Phil and Jase can't believe what they hear. Phil warns against the poisonous tongue and how much damage it can cause without accountability. Jase highlights Jesus' warnings against false prophets, and Phil explains why church leaders should steer clear of worldly appearances and friendship with the culture. Zach shows how friendship with the world actually makes us enemies of God, and Al talks about the woman running for governor of Georgia and how even she claims the state is one of the worst places in the country to do business in.  Watch the Unashamed overtime show, only on BlazeTV: https://BlazeTV.com/Unashamed - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? So, Zach sent me this morning something, I would call shocking, wouldn't you, Zach? Our old friend George Barna, who's a survey man. You know, he's for years. He's like, done a lot of surveys about what believers, you know, around America, church leaders, that type of thing. He wrote a book many, many years ago, I guess one of his first. one's called the frog in the kettle, which was a pretty big splash back then about, you know, just finding out what the vibe was in churches because, you know, you're in your little place that you're in, you know, and you don't always know what's going on across the landscape. So he just did some research. And when it came out, here was the results of it. He did a survey for Christian pastors around America and asked if they, what they're, what they're, if they possessed a biblical worldview. And then there were criteria. And I don't know, Zach, if you can find those criteria because I don't have that right in front of me.

Yeah, I've got them right here. You want me to read them? Yeah, read this. So we're going to set it up. And then I'm going to read you the results, Dad, and get you and Jay's and get your take on it. All right. Hold on. I said I had it up.

Yeah, so essentially what he's defining here is what does it mean to have a Christian worldview? And so then he's going to ask the question among certain population. of people who holds these views right here to be true, and there's not many of them, and they're pretty broad. The first one is, for the purpose of the survey, Barnard defines a biblical worldview as believing that absolute moral truth exists, number one, so absolute moral truth exists, two, that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles that it teaches. So it's not even necessarily going as far as biblical inerrancy.

It's just saying that just the principles that it teaches the Bible is totally accurate. Three, that Satan is considered to be a real force, like a real agent, not just merely symbolic. Four, a person cannot earn their way into heaven by trying to be good or to do good works. Five, that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth. six that God is all knowing, all powerful, and the creator of the world who still rules the universe to this very day. Let's see. Any more? Yep, that's pretty much it.

So I could safely say that the four of us would believe all that to be true. I certainly do. So here was the breakdown on how many different pastor roles agrees with that and has that worldview. Senior pastor, so the main guy. in most churches, 40%, 41%, believe that to be true, which means that almost 60% do not agree with something in that list. So that's, there you go, and that's the top. That's the best.

The next one is the associate pastor. He's down to 28% that believes that to be true. A teaching pastor, 13%. a children's or youth pastor 12%, meaning 88%, don't believe something in that list. And the executive pastor, which is a guy who pretty much runs things in most of the churches, 4%, meaning that 96% of them don't have a biblical worldview in one of the things they define. So I don't know, I found that to be shocking and maybe explains a lot about what's going on in America and why the church is not very effective at, you know, stopping our crumbling culture.

I don't know. What do y'all think about that? I mean, has that strike you? Because I was shocked. Well, it reminds me of the passes we just left, the Colossians, too, about the fine-sounding arguments, you know, the depend on human traditions and the basic principles of this world. So, yeah, I found it to be very disturbing as well. I was a little shocked. I don't know how big the survey was.

I haven't looked at it yet. I think it was more than a survey. That's kind of where I went. I was like, maybe they didn't understand the questions. I would simply say, a great, in numbers, a growing group have basically said, here's what we think. In other words, we're on planet Earth, we're looking around, you know, how'd we get here, how'd the cosmos get here, what are we doing here, like Jay says, is there a way out of here?

Is it possible? So we look at it, and some highly intelligent people have said, here's what we think. And a lot of the culture has gone with them. that we think that there was a large explosion, you know, billions of years ago, and that explosion is what you're seeing right now, the cosmos. So then you say, so how did we get here after the explosion? They said, well, salt water made us. So if you just look at it logically, I'm looking at it.

the things you just listed. For me, it's easier to believe there's some great power, add it all up, the design of it all. It's easier for me to believe a simple sentence in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. I either believe that, or I believe there was an explosion not knowing what exploded. There's an explosion. So what was there just prior to the explosion, they say nothing. I'm thinking, well, you've got nothing exploding and you start there and you don't acknowledge things like sin, love, hate. You don't have time for all that. You just, we're little balls of molecules stammering around down here and there's no, there's no end game except physical death and then they were done.

I just looked at both systems and it's easier for me to believe in God. And I've never seen him, never seen Jesus. I'm looking at the way it worked out. We ended up for some strange reason, not counting time by some kind of explosion. We're counting time. Our calendar just walked back 22 to years. Year one, well, whoa, that's a year Jesus showed up. That's interesting.

So we're counting time by them, but they've looked at it and said, we're not going to count time by them. We think billions of years ago there was an explosion. So just right out of the box, I think it's easier for me to believe in Genesis 1-1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and I read the entire story. it tells you where you came from, where the cosmos came from, what are you doing here? And there is a way out. At least we have hope that... Yeah, and I think a lot of the people in the survey, though, would claim, they would claim that they believe in Jesus and that they are a Christian.

And I think, I mean, these are leaders in the church. and it's just concerning to me that like what you know the fact that we can't if that's it because I thought the list was pretty benign I mean it was kind of basic tenets of the of the Christian faith it wasn't anything that was like

we didn't get into baptism let's not to bring that up again but it wasn't like these kind of issues it was like just core tenets of the faith not even core tenets of the faith there's really fundamental you know my ideas so I think, yeah, Zach, you're right. And when you think about it, that even, you know, accuracy and inertia of the scripture,

once you begin to move away from, you know, the straight path, then, you know, boy, it gets pretty wonky then in terms of we can go anywhere. And I think that's what you're seeing. I think you're seeing whole movements and whole denominations that they've really just lost their way because of that. And so, and my point is when you lose. it in the church, which Jason, I talk about this a lot on this podcast, then, which is the Bible's written mostly to the church, but when you lose your way there, then you can't be a light. You can't be a guidepost because there's no difference in you and the people you're supposedly trying to introduce Jesus to you.

James, in the book of James, it says it pretty well. The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire. by a small spark. The tongue is also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. Because you hear what a lot of people are saying. It corrupts the tongue. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

all kinds of animals birds reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man but no man can tame the tongue it's a restless evil full of deadly poison with the tongue we praise our lord and father and with with the tongue we curse men who have been made in god's likeness out of the same mouth comes praise and cursing My brothers, this should not be. Can both freshwater and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. Who is wise and understanding among you? Here's what I've embraced instead of there's no God, no good, no evil, no say, and all that.

Let him show it by his. good life, by deeds done and the humility that comes from wisdom. If you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your heart, don't boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but it's earthly. That's what we're currently looking at, more and more. Wisdom does not come down from heaven, but it's earthly impartial of the devil.

For where we have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is, first of all, pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy, good fruit, impartial, and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace a harvest of righteousness. So you have two systems. One operates like that with those characteristics, mercy, good fruit, and parcel, sincere, peacemakers. So what we're seeing is a gigantic war, and it's all about good and evil. The atheists and the unbelievers and the ones that their father is saltwater, they just don't have an argument for loving anybody. It's just not there. It's a dangerous thing. And then a gigantic proportion,

and based on those stats, a lot of people inside the church have bought into it. Yeah. Well, I think that's the key. It was one thing to think just people, but when we start talking about leaders and churches that are trying to take some of the worldly stuff and then apply it in or say, well, you know, the Bible's not really true.

Yeah. Or accurate all the way through. I mean, there's parts in there that are obviously just hyperbole, whatever, you know, however people, you know, can deny it. I mean, that's what I'm saying. It puts you in such a vulnerable position in spiritual warfare. I think you're exactly right now because you're allowing the evil one to then come in with these deceptive and hollow philosophies we're talking about and really steal everything, steal your candlelight, you know, the way John put. Yeah, they had a 17. year old, 18 maybe this morning on.

And he said, well, I get on the computer and then I sleep about 16 to 18 hours each day. But then I get back on my computer and he just sits in a back room, 17, 18 years old. And that's what his life is. Gets up, gets on the Internet, looks at whatever he wants to look at whatever he wants to. look at in sleep and get up and look at some more on the internet go to sleep that's what his life is all about and the and the suicide rate is out the roof i mean there's it's up to like 40% of young people are saying yeah i've thought about just just killing myself so you get a culture where there's no hope and it's all basically

on your father being salt water? I mean, it's a terrible thing. Look at. But Jesus addressed this, you know, sermon on the mound. Let's take a break. Jesus addressed this on, you know, when he gave that sermon on the mound,

he's like, watch out for false prophets. I mean, why was he saying that early on? It's like they come to you. In sheep's clothing. In sheep's for, ferocious wolves in sheep's clothing. And, I mean, I think, you know, the only thing you can guard against is he said, just look at their fruit.

So you think of the fruit of the spirit, because a lot of people are in churches, they've been going there the whole life, whatever. And, you know, to not look at the fruit of the leadership, if you don't see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, Well, you might have said, wait a minute. There's not a focus on Jesus above all of the things. Hang on. If we're not leaning toward grace and the authenticity of God's word,

I mean, I think that's pretty basic. So, you know, he then went on to say, I mean, kind of frightening. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will inherit the kingdom of heaven. And many will say, Lord, didn't we, did we not prophesy in your name? and drive out demons, and he says, I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doer. So, I mean, that's the only thing I would interject. But, you know, I think you got to remember.

But when you say in days in modern times that people, I mean, one of the churches obviously biggest issues is they seem to be, they want to be popular as opposed to being truthful. Because, look, the truth is not super. popular. You know, I mean, it's when you tell people this is wrong, you shouldn't do that. I've noticed that in this, you know, abortion has kind of come back to the forefront these last few months because of, you know, current events and Roe v. Wade and all that. And so I've noticed like some archbishops around the country. And I mean, they've taken strong stands about abortion. They've said that

certain politicians can't take communion because of what they're doing. And the pushback from the popular people that, that are, you know, on television is they're like, well, yeah, that's the reason. your churches are losing people because you take these stands on things that that was their response to it and i thought i mean he he's doing the right thing i mean it is his job to say you're straying but that's a different point i think when you're trying to police the world without jesus that's not your lane you know i mean we in the church we have different conversations because people claim to be followers of of jesus i'm not going to be shocked that the world acts like the world. So I do think we should share Jesus to the world. When, you know,

though when it comes to protecting human life, that one's a little different because you are protecting the innocent. I do think you should stand up and, you know, fight for life. But what I'm saying, Jay is in there, in the system of the Catholic Church, he is her pastor. And so she, she made a statement, he made, and, you know, they made it public, but I'm saying, that's what he should be doing. He should be saying that's wrong. You should be doing it. And so if you don't have people willing to take stands like that, I mean, I have applaud the guy.

I mean, you know, that takes courage. Well, I agree. But I'm saying with other social issues, you know, people are just wanting to, there's a difference in trying to police the world as a church when your own life, the fruit is not there. I mean, what I'm saying is how many times have you seen people get up church leaders and preach fantastical sermons on cultural issues? And then, you know, a year later comes out, well, he's, you know, living some secret life. Well, that's why, you know, it's our job is to share Jesus and offer grace to be humble. I mean, there are times where you have to be courageous in moments. and I do think protecting the unborn is one of those moments.

But I also realize you have different conversations outside the church and you do inside with people. But, you know, it's hard to, you're not going to get people to live right without Jesus, is my point. So you can just, you know, alienate yourself or all for grace. There does seem to be, in my opinion and my observation, like, you use the term, people want to be popular, which, you know, sounds kind of silly when you say it like that, but I mean, that's really what it is, right? Like, there's like a fear. I've talked about this a lot.

I've actually talked about the dark church on Sunday because we were in Matthew chapter 10, which is about persecution and how we are to enter it into the culture with the message of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom. And he says, be innocent as doves, but wise as serpents. And, you know, I think there has been a little bit maybe of an unhealthy, I don't want to, like, throw everything out with the bathwater, but there has been an unhealthy, probably bent for a lot of Christian leaders. I've felt this personally, to be winsome or to be nuanced, or I think these are the terms that we would probably use, right? We want to be able to speak in such a way that, you know, it's hard to nail us down, whatnot, because we want to be, we don't, no one wants to be marginalized. Nobody wants to be cast into the light as a fundamentalist or a extremist or out of touch or bigoted or whatever the accusations that are going to come. And you know they're going to come when you make any stance. And we see the opposite of that too.

We see people that turn everything into a political football. I don't want to be, I don't want to be associated with that either. But there is a point at which we have to be bold enough to be rooted in truth. I said this Sunday, I'm not sure where I got this from. If I stole this from whoever's listening, if you said this and I stole it from you, I'm sorry, I don't remember where I heard it, but it was essentially you can teach the truth without love. You can tell the truth without love, but you can't love without telling the truth. And I think that's when I see that survey, I wonder how did we arrive at such a point?

And maybe it's always been that way. I don't know. Maybe that's always been the state of the professional clergy that hasn't really held to a biblical worldview. I don't know. But I would think that the majority of people that are in that category look at those things and something in there's like, yeah, I'm not going to go with that because I don't want to be marginalized. So I do think that that could possibly be, Al, to your point, a major motivation. And another thing that I thought about, too, was I found it interesting that that executive pastor role was, was it made only only 4%? I mean, think about that.

I mean, and maybe there's something to the fact that maybe the church is relying less on the Holy Spirit in the last 15 to 20 years. And we're relying more on kind of our church growth models. And not to say that those church growth models are bad in and of themselves, but when we quit relying on the Holy Spirit and we try to put everything into a business model, you know, I just wonder what the repercussions. of that are going to be for the church. Here's James again. It's a great point. What causes fights and quarrels among you. Now this is a 2000 right at a 2,000-year-old writing.

Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something, but don't get it. Just think of every major city in these United States, and then you look worldwide, and you're like, whoa. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives

that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, this is a scare one. Don't you know that friendship with the world and I'm afraid that many of many a church has fallen victim to this. Friendship with the world is hatred toward God. Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. So you take your education system where the mention of God, Zach, you can't even mention God, nor evil.

Good and evil. You can't even mention it. So you do that for 60 years to a culture like we've done. It's been about 60 years beginning in the 60, 60 to 70 years. You're looking at the results of a culture that does, do not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God. God. You get down that road. It's a brutal, it's a brutal road, and it's even gotten into the churches got to where they don't take a stand on anything. Well, you said it, 4% believe in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. There is a devil. There is good. There is evil.

They're like, that person is the decision maker for most churches. Let's take it. Let's hang on, Zach. Let's take a break. Go for it. Yeah, that's a, that's a pretty powerful verse, Phil. I mean, I think it's, I mean, it should convict us when we, when we hear that, and we hear that friendship with the world makes us enemies to God. And we can laugh that off, and we can, I could, we can make fun of, you know, make fun of Phil for saying it and call him an old crusty fundamentalist. But I mean, but the text is still there. Yeah. And I think we've lost a reverence, not just for God's word, but for God himself. And, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, yeah, I think that we, I want.

wouldn't please him more than men. I was thinking when you were reading that, I was thinking of Lott and his wife. And when they escaped Sodom and Gomorrah, you know, she had a very hard time leaving behind that culture, leaving behind the friendships that she'd made. And just all she was, she got so ingrained in the culture that she, you know, she looked back and turned into a pillar of salt. In Second Peter, I think, I was just looking for it. I think it's like in chapter two and it talks about. lot, it said that he was tormented in his righteous soul for the people. And here it is,

he rescued Lot, oppressed by the essential conduct of unprincipled men for what he saw. And he heard that righteous men, by living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds. It's not a new thing. It's not a new thing, 2,000 years out from Jesus. It's not new. These things are exactly, it's, it's, it's been going on since God made us. But you know what, you know what the irony is, is that I would, I would bet my life on this, that the churches that grow, that shrink, I can tell you one thing, I bet they don't, I bet they don't have a pastor who is tormented in his righteous soul day after day by the lawless deeds of the people. I think to have more pastors and church leaders

to actually fill the burden of the ministry of the gospel of reconciliation. I think churches that grow are the ones that are authentic, and the ones that are authentic are the ones that are rooted in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so to me, this whole discussion, I mean, I think what I'd love to be a part of is, is a church movement that is, or the Spirit of God is moving, and you see lives being fundamentally changed. But you're not going to see that without the truth of that. of who God is and the truth of his word.

So, I mean, it's, you may be savvy and you may be cool and you may be culturally relevant. But I think, I would argue that one of the greatest idols in 2022 for the church is probably cultural relevancy. And I've had to deal with that in my own life. And over the past probably two years, I've begun to, okay, I got to, I don't want, I don't want to prop that up because I see where now that's headed. And it's stats like this that, that scare me. scared the hell out of me, you know, no pun intended. They literally scared the hell out of me, you know. Yeah. I'm with you. I understand. It's interesting you brought up a lot too from the Peter passage because to Jason's point earlier talking about how that sometimes people will take

public stands, but then privately, you know, all these things will come out. So they're just seeing it's hypocritical. But it's interesting that Lot was seen as righteous by God, although he probably should have left Saddam Memorial long before because his family was being destroyed there. But after he leaves, he survives with his two daughters. And then he gets drunk and sleeps with both of them and produces two children, which were Moab and Amnon, who became terrible nations that God had, you know, has separated from Israel for years and years and years. So I found it interesting that he was a righteous man. I mean, the Bible says that about him, He did believe in God, but he had to have been impacted by that terrible culture, and you see that result afterwards.

So, you know, sometimes you just can't. I mean, we all have to live in the world. Paul said that, right? But you don't want the world living in you. I mean, you have to keep that, as Jay said earlier, out of your own house, to start with, you know, because it is bad, you know, and you have to be able to present a better picture. We're not here to judge the world. James is going to say I've been reading

chapter 4 but the last thing he says basically there's only one lawgiver and judge the one who's able to save and destroy but you who are you to judge your neighbor our job is to point them

to God namely Jesus in flesh and his removal of their sin by dying on a cross and being resurrected after it all said and done that right there pretty well all churches need to stand on that and not budge we don't have to go around bad mouth than the world what all they're doing we look at them we see it and we're like man

boy do they ever need some counseling and some bible teaching but uh we're we're relics of the past now it didn't take long i mean we hadn't been ever 250 years but it is upon us now Oh, there's no doubt. That's true. And, you know, I agree that we need to have a positive message about Christ. I was watching someone who's running for governor of Georgia. And she said, I'm tired of people saying Georgia is a great place to do business when it's the worst place to live in. This is a woman running for governor of the state. She just said, my state's terrible. And I would anybody want to be here. Yeah. I mean, I just thought as a Christian and as a Christian leader, I don't want to want to. to be that person. I don't want to just be the one that's always, I want to be positive about what Christ does. I want to be positive about the fruit in your life, the change in your life. I mean, that's a much better message than just constantly being the angry person that says it's terrible. I think the problem here in Colossians, yeah, the problem in Colossians

was I think they recognized, I mean, the culture. Twice he said, you're, you're following the basic principles of the world or these people who are coming up with these arguments rather than Christ. So in Colossians 3, you know, he basically gives a blueprint for how we're to operate. But what they did in response in the church was they came up with a bunch of rules to seemingly combat the culture. I mean, but they weren't. focused on Christ, but the reason I was basing what I said earlier is when you get to the last verse of chapter 2, these rules that they... Read from, Jay just read it all the way from 20 down to the bottom.

I'll read it, but I want to read the last verse first because I just want to make the point that they had all these rules that we'll read about, and they were trying to put the church under law, and they had done the worst. thing that you can possibly do, which is, I mean, Paul says it graphically, is they had decapitated Jesus from a part of the system. That's what it says. Yeah. But at the end of the day, the last phrase of chapter two. Hang on for you. Wait. Hang on. Let's take a break. The last phrase in chapter two is, no matter all these things they'd come up with in the church to combat the culture, they didn't lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

It wasn't working what they were coming up with. So you said, well, what were they coming up with? In verse 16, he says, don't let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come. The reality, however, is found in Christ. Don't let anyone who delights in false humility, the worship of angels, disqualify you from the prize.

And such a person goes into great detail about what he's seen and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection with the head. Well, the head is Christ. There's the decapitation of Christ, from whom the whole body supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews grows. as God causes it to grow. You got to remember, he's not talking about the world.

These are people claiming to be leaders in the church. The other one calls this, not the world. They came up with a rule system to combat the world that was outside of Jesus. I mean, that's what's going on. So then he says, since you died with Christ to the basic principles of the world, he had just mentioned that. You know, we spent two podcasts talking about it. Why is though you still belong to it?

do you submit to its rules? This is where I came up with the idea of the number one rule is there are no rules. People are like, where'd you come up with that? Right there. Jesus has freed us from that. Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. These are destined to perish with use because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations have an appearance of wisdom with self-imposed worship,

false humility, and the harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. And so the point I want to make is when he gets chapter 3 and he has one little phrase that I think is the most important, and he says in 3, 3, you died and your life is hidden in Christ, and when Christ, in this one little phrase, who is your life, he is your life, appears, then you'll be with him in glory.

So to me, that's how you come back. I think as a church and as leaders, you should focus on being just like Jesus was in his world. We should be just like Jesus in our world. Daily conversations in the world. That's how we do it. There's a big shift out there. It involves two groups. Peter said, since Christ severed in his body, here's our answer to this.

that survey you just mentioned there, Zach, arm yourselves also with the same attitude. It's as serious. This is a strain sounding because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires. We've got a gigantic group of individuals in our culture and you say the way out is you don't live the rest of your earthly life for evil human desires but rather for the will of god and anybody who hears that in our culture would say about me if they're listening to me right now they would say you talk about and y'all too you're talking about a

bunch of strange dudes strange remember for you've spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do. We've all been there and done that. Living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, it sounds like my life. Orgy's not quite that bad, I don't think, carousing and detestable idolatry. Now, what's this? Our culture around us and the people that it's impacted, including churches across our land, they think it's strange. Strange now. that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. Those are the, they're doing it to the faithful,

and it's just an onslaught, and it never stops. They will have to give an account to him who's ready to judge the living and the dead, for this is the reason the gospel was preached, even to those who are now dead, so they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God, in regard to the spirit.

So. But my point is, Phil, when you read that list. They say you are one strange dude when people hear you speak. I like that. That's about strange acting old boy. Because the point of Colossians is he says, don't you know the mystery of godliness is that Christ is in you? Well, when you read that list of sins and you see a guy coming and giving you advice

about church or how you should act. You can know if that person looks like Jesus. That's right. I mean, when you're saying to yourself, okay, wait a minute now, Jesus would never do that. He just wouldn't do that. You can see that in people. See, they'd look at you, Jay.

He said, why in the world do you, you're being cursed every day? Why in the world would you keep doing what you're doing? People see you coming and say, I'm glad you asked the question. Because what I'm saying is, what do we do about the culture? What do we do about the church leaders? And he's finally going to get to the end.

And when he gets in chapter 3 in verse 23, and I want to highlight the word you, he says, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart is working for the Lord, not for men. Because these men have come in and influence the church. and they were doing whatever, you know, that didn't look like Jesus. They were not, people were not seeing Christ in them, which is our fundamental purpose for being on the earth. But at some point, you've got to look around. You're not going to find a perfect church.

There's going to be false prophets in every church. There's going to be hypocrites. Anti-Christ running in every direction. The world is going to do what they do. Yep. And we're not going to go try to. police every social issue out there without Jesus. It's not going to work.

They're going to argue. We're going to argue. And then people say, oh, you told them, you're standing on truth. Reality is found in Christ. Point about love, you know, because you have to be bigger than that and not get your feelings hurt. And have daily conversations on whatever you do, you do it for the Lord because Christ is in you. And you do it in love, but you're not going to be able to get people to change their behavior in our culture without Jesus. It's not going to happen.

That is correct. So, I mean, a lot of these people, they're like, there's no power there. Yeah, let's go on this crusade and tackle some issue. The only exception I make is the one about preserved an innocent life because I do think that that's different. Because you can't help someone if they're murdered before they get here. I mean, we need to try to protect that because we believe all people are made in the image of God. I mean, and so we try to step in and at least get them here. I feel like there is a rescue that needs to be done there.

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of hard to nail it down, though, because it's, I mean, I agree with what you're saying, particularly on the emphasis of me taking responsibility for my own walk and like me living out the Christian life. You know, I think that we do get very caught up. It's an easy distraction for me to look at a survey like this and become doomsday man, doomsday profit about the perils of the church and the culture and, you know, that's easy to do. and I think that honestly, probably one of the reasons why you see those statistics is people reacting to that and then kind of being embarrassed by that and then going to the other extreme. So I do think that the easy solution for us is to focus on ourselves and our own spiritual wall.

But, I mean, Jesus does have something to say about, I mean, he is Lord of everything. And so I think it's just a hard discussion because we are to be sought in life. And I do think that even beyond... I get letters all the time, Zach, and they say they're young and they're in college and they give me that information. And they say, you are a very bold man. How come I can't get bold like you get bold? What do you tell them? Well, let me interject something.

They're 21. I have a question that popped in my head. did Jesus come to save people or did he come to fix the religious world? You just think about his minute. Look at his whole ministry while he was here in his whole life. He came here seemingly to show the value in every person. He did it on a daily basis. Now the religious world, they came to him and said, hey, what are you doing?

Well, then he addressed him. when they came to him. But he didn't come here trying to fix, you know, the religious world. That just kind of happened because they kept confronting him. So my point was, I'm going to try to be like Jesus in the world. And because if I try to fix the religious world or the culture without Jesus, guess what? I'm going to spend all my time spinning my wheels.

You are. I'm just going to be sitting here spinning in one place. But he did come to seek and save the loss, but he also, he did bring tremendous religious reformation. You think about Matthew 10. I read this passage on Sunday. He did, but I'm saying more times than not, they confronted him, and he responded. Now, there were occasions where he went. He went to the synagogue, you know, I mean, there were, okay, but those were rare.

and I'm saying if you get caught up in trying to fix all the false profits, well, you're going to spend the rest of your life doing that. That's true. That's actually a good point. I mean, I think that my point was that change comes, social change comes when people change, right? I mean, like we want to address social justice issues, but the problem with that is, you know, the systems are made up. of individual people. So if you're going to have any real system change, you're going to have to have people in the system change.

And I think that's where Jesus' ministry was focused on was like people, you know, people finding it not just atonement from sin, but also transformation. And when that happens, I mean, you think about the, being Phil and I went to Rome that we got to witness the, and how you were there, we got to witness the ruins of the Roman Empire, which is pretty impressed. Even the ruins are fairly impressive. And imagine this was a couple thousand years ago. And then you think about this carpenter, this guy named Jesus,

who was not a man of noble birth at all, just instituted his ministry that what we talked about when Jesus was baptized in the spirit of the Lord descended on him like a dove. And the father said, this is my son whom I'm well pleased. And from that moment on for three years, something happened in that three years that was powerful enough to bring down the Roman Empire, even though that wasn't his primary agenda. But it did happen.

And then in 8070, it brought down the temple in Jerusalem. And so something very, very profound happened. And I think it was the ministry of reconciliation that individual people were participating in. Do you remember, Zach, one of the most powerful scenes we saw was, you know, you go to the Roman Coliseum and you walk in it. It's amazing. I mean, that 2,000 years later that they engineered and built this thing and most of it still standing. But then you looked on one end and somebody, I don't know when, I never heard when it happened, but somebody put a cross at the end of the Coliseum.

Remember it was down? It's big. It was a big cross. And I thought that was really a great symbol to see and look and see that, you know what? The cross conquered the Coliseum, even though at the time the things that were happening there and the Christians were on the run and they were persecuted so badly under different. For 300 years, for 300 years after Jesus left, the Roman Empire tried their best to slaughter all of Christians.

300 years. And then they slowly, old Constantine, some of their emperors heard about him. And they started following Jesus and it began to ease. But the damage had already been done. I was just trying to make the point of what Colossians was doing. with. I mean, I can give you two different occasions. One, when I went to a worldly event and shared Jesus, everybody was drunk. I mean, they had strippers there. And, you know, a brother confronted me said, you should have never gone there. I said, well, number one, I didn't know they were going to have strippers. I said, you can't, you can't drop. Apparently, we're working some, we're working different events here. Yeah, you can't just drop. I was at an event with strippers. I mean, you got to give us more context.

I mean, they were raising money for the ducks. It was the ducks unlimited. Great. Phil was supposed to be there, which I think the Lord intervened, because he got sick or something. I take Phil's place and I go there. And this place was, you're talking about evil. So I go in there, and I'm supposed to get up and speak.

When I got up, everybody was so drunk. They wasn't even giving me the respect to hear without my duck call demonstration. And, I mean, it was just, so I held my Bible up. It took a couple minutes to quieten down because people were looking around like, Is that a man with a Bible? We have as bad, the only really wild party I've ever been to in my life, and I didn't know it was a wild party. When I find myself in this situation, so I held my Bible up,

and I gave a three-minute gospel presentation that I felt like didn't go well in this scenario. So, but it was a real awesome experience for my faith, and I thought, I think this is what Jesus would do. I didn't do it in a mean, belligerent way. I just said, this is what I'm into. And then I did my duck call seminar. There was a smattering of applause.

I went down the road. Well, three or four men that were there contacted me and wound up giving their life to Christ over that event. But then I had a brother in the Lord who I respected who confronted me of it, said, you shouldn't go to places like that. Well, I vehemently disagreed with that. You were correct. I thought, here's a guy using a rule system based on the basic principles of the world,

that I just didn't agree with that situation. Now, I haven't said that, the other scenario is I went to a church group and did the same speech. Now, there was none of that going on. I had another brother confront me, so you shouldn't go to those types of churches because they're in error. And they were, you know, giving me the list of things that they're wrong about. And you go in there endorses what they believe. Well, I disagree with that too. So my point is, you said, what do you, what, what's your point? I got that model from Jesus. I didn't come up that myself. I'm out here trying to share Jesus with people and religious people are confronting me on every side saying you shouldn't do that you shouldn't

do that so i i'm trying to use some of the arguments paul is using about look i'm i'm i'm the body of christ wherever i go i'm going to share jesus i'm not going to therefore get them to fill out a form and see if i agree with everything yep hang on dad before you do that we're out of time so i want you to read that verse when we get to overtone therefore it's why the apostle we're going to we're going to Hang on, down. We're going to take a break. We're going to do that in overtime. Hang on.

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