Core Training: Theological Triage

Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood

Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.

Thank you so much for tuning in to our podcast.

You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word

about important issues facing your life that can guide you

according to the Bible. Listen, I just want to welcome

everybody tonight to this new series.

We're so thankful that those of you who are here live are here

with us. And then also for those who are

listening to this online, this is called core training.

We're going to have several episodes of this sessions

together, and this is going to be kind of a unique series.

Believe it or not. All these things tie together.

What I do on midweek and what I'm doing on Sundays, I really

do tie together to kind of build us toward a process.

But as we continue our progress toward an even stronger and

clearly understood pathway of discipleship, we're going to

start this series. We're going to dive into some

pretty deep water. And so my challenge is pretty

significant in the sense of I have some pretty high level deep

thoughts to share theologically and doctrinally, but I don't

want it to be boring. I don't want it to not be

applicable. I and I want it to be

understood. So, so I want us to translate

theology into into practice and application.

So I'm going to work really hard to do that.

And I think you'll see that. I hope it works out well for us

and it's going to be important for you to not miss a session if

possible, because these really do build each week.

And you'll see how that works together as we walk through what

we're going to do tonight. And so the for those who are

listening online, I hope you'll download that listening guide as

well. For those of you here, I hope

you have one of those because we live in a world now that frankly

has completely lost its mooring of truth.

They they're this world aimlessly drifts from reactive

opinion to frankly overreacting opinion, and it does it over and

over again. So this lack of belief in a

consistent truth that applies to everyone leads to great personal

and even social instability. That's part of why you see what

you see in our world and on the news, and it causes a sense of

fear and uncertainty, not to mention horribly misled personal

and corporate conclusions and belief.

So, so people make up their own belief and then hang on to it,

and that leads them to the wrong conclusions, and they don't know

that. So this chaotic context not only

affects the world around you, that's why the world's crazy,

but it also effects inside the church more than often, you

might know. So we find ourselves and we find

our families, our children, sometimes caught in what I would

refer to as the vortex of spiraling views and opinions,

where we have different interpretations, different

traditions that challenge biblical authority and also

challenge some of the foundations of our belief.

And so we really need to understand why do we believe

what we believe and what is it that we believe and why?

So we're going to talk through some of that.

So what do we believe? What must we believe?

And that's an important category.

What must we believe and how hard must we believe that and

how strongly must we hold to some of these certain beliefs?

And then how do you tell the difference then between that

that level and and false teaching or, or different

interpretations? For example, why are there

denominations we're going to talk about that different

interpretations, different doctrinal disagreements versus

legitimate essential theology. And how do you, how do you

figure out what's, what's worth dying for and what's worth

debating, but still serving together about right?

So we need to talk about this now.

Liberal theologians, true liberal theology, which is

something I hope that you've not even been exposed to, but true

liberal theology continues this idea to minimize the

significance of doctrine in order to be more inclusive.

They want to be more acceptable. They want to be more palatable

and So what that leads to is a pluralistic or universal

universalistic, I can't say that word universalistic.

Thank you supercalifragile and and it leads them to these

conclusions and proclamations. Now we know pluralism says to us

that how many ways are there to God pluralism, many universalism

says who's going to be saved? Everybody.

And so it leads them to these conclusions because they don't

want to offend anybody. They they don't want to be too

exclusive. They don't want to be offensive

to anyone. Therefore they include everyone.

And there's really no barriers or lines of belief, which is

obviously not what the Bible teaches.

When I LED one of our doctoral programs at Southeastern

Seminary, it was a very practical degree.

And one of the things we used to do is almost all the students

were pastors and we would have them do a theological survey of

their church. Well, frankly, I had to stop

that assignment because they were so depressed when they got

that survey back because they found that in their Southern

Baptist churches, they had pluralists, they had

universalists, they had all kinds of is in their

congregations. And it became so depressing that

we just said, let's, we're just not going to do that anymore.

Let's, let's take this from a different approach.

And then others are on the other side of the equation to where

they're overly legalistic, right?

And harsh. One of the number one complaints

every time I do demographic studies of an area, including

this one, I could show you the ones from this area.

One of the things they don't like about the church is that

we're too harsh, we're too legalistic, even though they

often don't have any clue what we really believe.

But that's their opinion of us. But some people are overly

legalistic, are overly harsh, and they're harsh in their

judgement of anyone and everyone who disagrees with their

interpretations of all things, large or small.

So you can have a disagreement about anything and you're just

wrong, and you're a horrible liberal, you're a heretic,

you're going to hell or whatever it might be, even though it

might just be a different interpretation of something

that's not of primary significance for salvation,

right? So we got to talk about these

classifications a little bit. So they condemn anybody like

that. So we're desperate for a solid

biblical hermeneutic of theology and belief.

And that's what this series, Core Training is about.

Theologian David Wells once wrote this.

He says without theology there can be no church because

theology holds the key to Christian identity, to Christian

continuity, to genuine piety, to serious worship, and to the sort

of Christian thought that seeks to bring the import of God's

word into the world. Now, what he just said was that

without without us understanding what we believe about the Bible

and why it's going to be hard for us to apply the Bible in our

lives and to help other people understand the Bible until it

apply it to their lives. So we need to understand these

these things. And even though the word

theology might not be exciting to you, the word doctrine might

not be exciting to you, we're going to make this exciting and

very practical. We're going to talk about things

that you're going to say. Yeah, yeah.

What about that? We're going to do some of that

in this series. I'm going to hit some of the

hard things and some of the easier things along the way.

You'll see. So there can often be this, this

presence of see if this words throw you of what I would call a

theological mosaic, you with me, where even within a single

church, even within this room right now or people listening

right now, there are differences of opinion about certain beliefs

or certain interpretations. There's certain hard passages

that that there are multiple interpretations that scholars

would even put forth. And what do we believe about

that, right? What do you believe about the

second coming of Christ, for example?

What do you believe about spiritual gifts, for example?

There are just all kinds of things that that can actually

divide or we can learn to, to share with one another and still

serve. And so we're, we're talking

about the unity of the body. So what does this church, what

does Inglewood believe and why? And that's where this is going

to end up. Who is Inglewood and why?

And, and what must we believe in a broader sense in order to go

to heaven? What do you have to believe in

order to really be a Christian, right?

Because in our world today, you know this as well as I do.

I mentioned this in a sermon Sunday.

But to think about, there are a lot of people out there who say

I'm a Christian, but they really don't know what that means.

That's more of a cultural thing. And that's true of all other

world religions. I, I know a lot of people who

are, who would claim to be Muslim, but the reason they're

Muslim is because granddaddy was a Muslim and uncle was a Muslim

and daddy was a Muslim and Mama was a Muslim.

And, and it's not a personalized faith or even a faith they live

out. They're just a cultural Muslim

or a cultural Jew, but they're also certainly cultural Baptists

as well, right? And so how do we actually

personally understand this and embrace this and teach our

families So about what can I have strong interpretational

opinions but still believe those who disagree with me are still

going to be in heaven with me? You know, I can believe pretty

strongly about this, but it's not enough to cross the line of

you're not saved. At the same time, I think, you

know, there's almost this sense of when we get there, God's

going to show you that I was right.

But, but, but we'll be there together, you know what I'm

saying? And then, and then about what

the, what are those things that we can disagree about and still

love and serve together in the same church, in the same small

group? You know, we, but we don't

necessarily agree 100% with each other about that interpretation.

So, so you can see these levels kind of appearing of, of, of

doctrine. So we need some way to think

through these important questions that can often divide

rather than unite, but we want them to unite.

So. So there are fancy words for

this. One of them is called a

doctrinal taxonomy. All that means is a way to

prioritize certain doctrines and to kind of rank them in a

certain order. That doesn't mean that nothing

that that not all doctrine is important or that parts of the

word of God are unimportant. That's not true at all.

But there's some things essential for salvation and then

some things essential for unity and some things that we can

debate about and sit and sit in a small group together and, and,

and have a fun debate about, right.

So we need a way to think about this.

So, so Albert Mohler and by the way, these these levels have

existed since the early church councils, very early in church

history. They knew they had to do this

because they were fighting heresy.

And so because they were fighting false teaching in the

early church, they had to create these understandings.

So these have existed from the the very first days of the

church. So Al Mohler, who's the

president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, my former

boss, wrote an important article and it's called a call for

Theological Triage and Christian Maturity.

And on his website, you can actually go there and, and, and

see this term theological triage.

Now think about this word triage for a moment.

We often use that in the medical world.

It's a French word that means to sort.

And this is where in an emergency room sit.

This is why you wait for 12 hours in an emergency room

because somebody else has come in with they're bleeding worse

than you are, right? And so the people who are

bleeding the worst or having the active heart attack get in first

and you with a broken toe is sitting there for 12 hours

wishing you had stayed home. But that's where that

determination of priority, the the determination of urgency

comes in and that medical triage, right?

Certainly in in hospitals. And if you think of a, an army

hospital or something like that, you could understand that word.

But we but Mueller is saying that we need theological triage

for ourselves and for our church and frankly for others.

And so listen to what he says, and I'll read through this

pretty quickly. It says in every generation, the

church has commanded to contend for the faith once for all

delivered to the Saints. That's no easy task.

And it's complicated by the multiple attacks upon Christian

truth that mark our contemporary age.

Assaults upon the Christian faith are no longer directed

only at isolated doctrines. The entire structure of

Christian truth is now under attack by those who would

subvert Christianity's theological integrity.

Today's Christian faces faces the daunting task of

strategizing which Christian doctrines and theological issues

are to be given highest priority in terms of our contemporary

context. This applies both to the public

defense of Christianity in face of the secular challenge and the

internal responsibility of dealing with doctrinal

disagreements. Neither is an easy task, but

theological seriousness and maturity demand that we consider

we consider doctrinal issues in terms of their relative

importance. God's truth is to be defended at

every point and in every detail, but responsible Christians must

determine which issues to serve first.

Rank attention in time of theological crisis.

And if you don't know this, this world is in a theological

crisis. We're in a truth crisis.

And so we've got to decide which of the things are are are worth

fighting for and which of the things are can be left for

discussion, but not necessarily the fight, right?

So we need to prioritize battle plan.

And this is not only important and here's kind of part of my

goal so that we might better understand what we believe to

serve together in unity, but also so we're better equipped in

terms of apologetics to know how to address this lost world.

And so it's a both end. It's both for inside the church,

for our unity and strength and discipleship, but also how do I

deal with the arguments and the false truth that's out there,

right? And later in the year, we're

going to do personal evangelism training.

So this will become really important for us.

There's another guy named Gavin Ortlin who wrote a book called

Finding the Right Hills to Die on the case for theological

triage. And he just says triage is a

system of prioritization. Doctrines have different kinds

of importance. Some hills are worth dying on

and others are not. Now, not everybody agrees with

that, and it's easy to not agree with it in principle because

some want to fight about everything.

So some want to fight about everything all the time.

They do, especially inside the church.

They will if you let them. And I've spent massive amount of

times in the churches that I've worked with over the years,

especially those in conflict and turmoil, massive amount of times

with these people who bring everything up to the highest

level of immediate urgency and conflict.

Everything is top level regardless of what it is.

For example, if you don't believe exactly what I believe

about the second coming of Christ, you're not going to

heaven. That kind of idea.

You with me. All right.

So if someone is not sitting there bleeding to death, you

have plenty of time to work on that chip tooth.

But but that's not where the church is today.

This world is bleeding to death. And so we have to prioritize.

We live in a state of overwhelming lostness and

confusion and have to prioritize our time and our effort in our

conversations with this lost world.

And now please hear me. We want to study every single

aspect of God's truth with eagerness.

We want to study the whole Bible, every single verse

theologian Ji Packer in his book knowing God, some of you have

probably read that book, says do not all children of God long

with the psalmist to know just as much about our heavenly

Father as we can learn. Is not indeed the fact that we

have received love for his truth in this way, proof that we shall

have been born again. So though we conclude a certain

interpretation of a passage might not be worth dividing

over, it doesn't mean that we say we don't care about it

either. So we care about every aspect of

the word of God, especially inside the church and our

studies together and our small groups together and our

preaching, our midweek service. We, we want to study at all.

Every word of God is hugely important and we want to know

about it. So that's what that's why I've

been emphasizing one of the reasons I emphasize so much.

You didn't think I would get through this without mentioning

it. This is why I emphasize connect

groups so much. It's because it's in that small

community. And so I want everybody to be in

the worship service in midweek and in the connect group because

you're going to get a better diet of the truth of God by

doing that well-rounded weekly experience, right?

So plus, we're going to be teaching you pretty soon not

only how to walk in prayer in podcasts, but you all stay tuned

because we're also going to be doing a series on how to study

the Bible. So we're going to talk to you

about how do you in your personal time, how do I

personally study the Bible? How can I take a passage of

Scripture? What questions should I be

asking? What should I be looking for?

And so we're going to do a series of podcasts to help you

with that that you can listen to while you're in your personal

quiet time if you want to. So we're going to do that as

well. All right, so let's let's look

at some Scripture. Acts chapter 17, verse 11 says

Acts 17:11

this. Now these Jews were more noble.

I'll get it out now. These Jews were more noble than

those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all

eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these

things were so. What a great testimony.

That's who we want to be. We want you know, don't just

listen to my sermons. Don't just listen to my lessons.

See if see if I'm right, see if I'm true.

Test me. Go to the Word of God, make sure

that what I'm saying is right. You feel free to do that

anytime. So in but in our current

culture, in our current church context, we've got to recognize

that there are certain doctrines that have eternal impact that we

really have to be careful about. In other words, if you don't

believe this, you're not saved. So we really want to focus on

that. So in fact, Paul designates DA

Carson would remind us, and we see this in Scripture that even

Paul designated certain doctrines as of first

importance, for example, in First Corinthians 15, three,

where he's sharing the gospels, what he's doing.

If you ever want to know, ever want to see a great synopsis of

the gospel in the New Testament, go to 1st Corinthians chapter 15

and he'll spell it out for you. But he says this in verse 3.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also

received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the

Scriptures. But then Carson would also add,

there are other beliefs that actually allow for some

differing of opinion. Listen to Romans 14.

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to

quarrel over opinions. The person believes he may eat

anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.

Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let

not the one who abstains pass judgement on the one who eats,

for God has welcomed him. And you might say, well, what in

the world are we talking about? Well, he goes on in verses 5 and

6, and I'll tell you so. One person in verse 5 esteems

one day is better than another, while another esteems all days

alike. Each one should be fully

convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day

observes it in honor of the Lord.

The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives

thank to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of

the Lord and gives thanks to God.

Now what in the world is he talking about?

Well, you got to understand that in the early church you had

people coming from all kinds of backgrounds, right?

And, and there was conflict at times between those different

backgrounds. And so you had different

traditions, you had different festivals, you had different

interpretations of Old Testament law.

Remember in, in the New Testament days, they didn't have

one of these complete yet. They didn't have the whole

Bible. And so a lot of their scripture

that they would study was still the Old Testament scripture.

And then they were hearing about the the teachings of Jesus from

the apostles and and then Paul started writing letters,

etcetera. And so as the words coming

together, these differences and these beliefs could cause

division, they could cause separation.

Let me go on a little further. Romans 14 verse 12.

Romans 14:12

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

Therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any

longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or

hindrance in the way of a brother.

I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is

unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks

it's unclean. For if your brother is grieved

by what you eat, you're no longer walking in love by what

you eat. Do not destroy the one for whom

Christ died. So do not let what you regard as

good be spoken of as evil. For the Kingdom of God is not a

matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace

and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is

acceptable to God and approved by men.

So then, let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual

upbuilding. See what he's talking about

here. There's a conflict between Jews

and Gentiles going on. And so you have Jewish people

who are still working through dietary Old Testament rules and

laws as, as believers, they're still, still working through

those things. Well, the Gentiles don't know

anything about that. So the Gentiles are over here

and they're eating and drinking things and that that can offend

those Jewish believers. And the Jewish believers are

then judging the Gentiles, which can offend the Gentiles.

And so we we recognize that what this is, you may not see it this

way. This is doctrinal interpretation

of the Old Testament. And they had different

interpretations of different parts of the Old Testament as

they were learning together. Right?

In fact, in Ephesians 2, it says this.

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both 1 and is broken

down in his flesh, the dividing wall of hostility.

He's talking about the same thing right here.

He's talking about the conflict between Jewish background

believers and Gentile background believers and the fact that this

is being broken down. And so we might think that these

are simply cultural or traditional things, but for the

Jewish peoples, they would have considered these Old Testament

doctrinal issues and very serious like you, you can't do

that. You're wrong for doing that.

And I could see, I could, I could see that that conflict

happening in a body when you have that mixed group of people

coming together who are saved. You know, I know you don't

believe this, but this happens today.

I mean, there are people who might come from a different

church and join this church. And at that church, we didn't do

it that way, right? And so in our tradition at that

church, this is what we did. And that's right.

And the way you all do it is wrong.

I've encountered that. Well, my very first senior

pastor, it was a great blessing, but it was also a hoot.

That's a Hebrew word. So so the very first, very first

senior pastor, it was a little bit of church in a little bit of

town and I was in student ministry for a few years and

larger churches in a larger place.

And we were making these transitions trying to figure out

what God wanted. This is just stop being a church

plant and it just become a church.

And I was their first put paid person really.

And what they had done in this small town is the big Baptist

Church had gone very, this had gone off the wheels.

I'll just, I want to go into detail.

They, they had become heretical and really bad teaching and

stuff. So there was a, a, a retired

missionary who lived there and said, we need a true Southern

Baptist church in this town. So he started this church and,

and very well, but every single member of that church in the

beginning was a disgruntled member who had left another

church. And there were about 3 or 4

churches and they got, they got disgruntled.

That's, that's a, that's a Greek word, disgruntled in English,

we'd say mad. And so they got mad and they

left that church and they were all in this new church.

So I, I basically inherited an entire congregation of really

angry people. And, and my, my well out there,

we and then over here and you all, it's fantastic.

So we just want a whole bunch of new people to Jesus who didn't

care about any of that stuff and deluded that whole situation.

But anyway, so we need to seek unity and peace even when we're

diverse in our background and opinions, right?

And it's really always interesting to me.

One of the blessings I had when I worked in the Philippines was

I worked at the International Baptist Church in Manila.

We had 14 different nationalities when I was there.

And so you had all these people coming not only from different

backgrounds, but literally different places coming

together. And it was a beautiful thing.

They got along really well. It was a wonderful educational

experience. And we actually had, we actually

would had a thing where we would have dinners at each other's

homes and we would have cultural dinners from where you were from

and you would host these things and so people could learn about

your culture and learn about your traditions and then fight

later. So it was great, but I have

dealt so much with the vision in my consulting and interim work.

And, and I just be honest with you, most of it, I mean, the

massive high percentage of it is based on opinion and feeling and

not true doctrine. You have a hard time believing

that. No, that's where that's where

most of the hurt feelings in church often come from.

It's very much relational. So Jesus even talked through

this a little bit in his high priestly prayer as he's going to

the cross. Jesus prays multiple times that

his followers would be one in John 17, which is just a host

study in and of itself. Beautiful passage, verse 22.

The glory that you have given me, I have given to them that

they may be 1 even as we are one, I and them and you and me,

that they may become perfectly 1 so that the world may know.

I mean, this is a testimony that you sent me and loved me even as

you loved me. And so we see Jesus pointing out

that this oneness, the way the Holy Spirit brings the oddities

of the world together into the church and we become one family,

that's actually a testimony. It's a testimony to his grace

and love. And so because we've been

reconciled to him through faith in Christ, and we should also

seek reconciliation and unity with one another.

But Jesus also prays this. So don't miss this part in verse

17. So he's not saying you can just

believe anything and everything and it's OK.

Verse 17 says sanctify them in the truth.

Your word is truth. So you can come from all these

different places and be one, but at the same time, there is one

truth, and we better know what that is, and we better know what

the essentials are, right? And so some theological

prioritization or triage is helpful.

It helps us to understand how to deal with disagreements within

the church, but also how to answer those people outside the

church. So this is a really, really

important study. Whether you think so yet or not,

you will. But because we can find our

identity first in the Gospel, not in doctrinal separation, but

then we can also understand the differences of interpretation

and opinion we have out there. There's a very famous saying in

Latin. It's often attributed to

Augustine or Augustine, depending on what part of North

Carolina you're from. But, but it really isn't

something he said, although it's often, you can probably go

online and it'll say that Augustine or Augustine said

this, but he really didn't. This was given to him much

later. It's really, really from the

17th century and it basically says this, I won't read the

Latin part, but it basically says in essentials unity, in non

essentials liberty and in all things charity.

So we're going to in the in love, even though we might

disagree, but in the essentials we need to be together.

And so I'm going to show you a couple of models of

prioritization and we're going to walk through several examples

over these next sessions. And so we're going to talk about

some of the most important things I'm going to share with

you one night about why we must believe what the Bible is and

why. Why do we believe the Bible is

the word of God and why does that matter?

For example, I'm going to share with you what must we believe

about Jesus and why does that matter in pretty detail.

And then we're going to get into some of the other layers to

where I promise you I'm going to do a night on eschatology just

to mess with your minds. We'll also talk about spiritual

gifts and a few other things, but I want to show you a few

models and we're going to dive deeply into some of these

things. And again, let me just show you

this this. Let's not make this complicated.

Here's the way Moeller does it. Here's the way Dr. Moeller does

it. He talks about 3 levels of

theological urgency, each kind of corresponding to the needs of

the world. He goes first.

Here's first level, first level are the most central and

essential truths of the Christian faith.

If you deny this first level, if you deny these doctrines, you

are by definition not a Christian.

You can't deny these things and be saved.

You can't deny these things and actually be a Christian.

And so these first order, this first level doctrine, and we'll

talk like that. We're going to talk about

primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries 123 So these are

vitally important. These are the most fundamental

truths of the Christian faith, and a denial of these represents

nothing less than a denial of Christianity.

Then you have a second order or second level, and then these

Christians may disagree on them. And this disagreement will often

create significant barriers and boundaries between them.

I'm going to talk about denominations in a minute.

When Christians organize themselves into congregations

and denominations, these boundaries become pretty

evident. There are reasons there are

denominations and I want to talk about that in a minute.

So one of the things that Molar says, he says Christians across

a vast denominational range can stand together on the 1st order.

We're all going to heaven. We, we can do that and recognize

each other as authentic Christians while understanding

that the existence of the 2nd order disagreements prevent the

closeness of fellowship that we might otherwise enjoy here on

earth. So, and, and you might think,

and I'll get to, well, I'll get to that in a minute.

And so many of the most heated arguments in Christianity are

not on the 1st order, They're on the 2nd order.

That's where a lot of the arguments come into play.

So we're, for example, even what we think about the church.

And then there's a third order. And in these third order, this

is where we can disagree, but that's where we could even be in

close fellowship. We could even be in the same

church and the same connect group and, and not necessarily

share exactly the same opinion about a certain text, a

difficult passage or interpretation of something.

So those 3 levels are going to be the simplest way we can do

this. And and and, and Christians may

find themselves in disagreement on any number of things, you

know, interpretation of difficult texts, for example.

But, but, but we have to agree on those top level ones.

And so Ortlin, Gavin Ortlin kind of puts it this way.

He goes, there are doctrines that are essential to the

gospel. There are doctrines that are

urgent for the health and practice of the church, but

still divide us denominationally.

And then there are doctrines that are important or

unimportant for the gospel witness and for the church to

continue its ministry. So not everything fits into

these categories. So we're going to talk through

some of these. I'll give you a lot of examples.

And so again, don't misunderstand this.

That doesn't mean that this any, any kind of theological triage

doesn't mean that we're implying that that we take any biblical

truth with any less seriousness. Again, we want to study every

single word. We want to study the whole

Bible. We want to believe in the whole

thing. What we're talking about is how

do we work together and unite together and how do we address

this world out here? So there's some urgency.

So we need to embrace and teach the comprehensive truthfulness

of the Scripture. There are no insignificant

doctrines, but there are some essential foundations that we

need to talk about to help us avoid confusion and conflict.

And again, in liberal theology, just this what what happens in

liberalism is that they basically have a basic

disrespect for biblical authority.

And so because of that, the mark of true liberalism is the

refusal to even admit there's a first level.

Liberal theologians don't agree there's a first level.

And that's why they get into universalism or pluralism to

where, you know, there, there aren't essentials that we can

have different opinions about the cross, we can have different

opinions about the resurrection, we can have different opinions

about the Bible. And so they kind of treat

everything like a third level and that's when you know you're

dealing with a true liberal. But our world today, frankly

doesn't care about any of this. It doesn't.

In fact, the world is going to sit there and say you just need

to accept them all and stop dividing and just love one

another. That's what the world's going to

say. God is love.

If they believe in any kind of God thing at all, God is love.

Why don't you all stop arguing, quit fighting one another, and

just agree on everything and get along and love one another and

just accept everybody. That's what the world will say

and they'll say it in that's not a guess because I see it in my

studies. They'll they'll say that to me

and it sounds simple, but it never is.

Doctrinal ambiguity is the result.

In other words, we're not going to believe in anything at that

point. And This is why I promise you

there are real reasons why there are different denominations.

And many of those reasons are real doctrinal issues.

And, and there may be some of you here because I hear it from

people inside the church that talks about how we should just

all work together. It's all about the one body of

Christ and how we ought to unite with one another.

And I, I agree there are things we should do Better Together.

I have no argument about that. But I, I, I meet those who

believe denomination should be done away with and we should all

just be 1 body united and serving together.

And that's a very nice thought and, and it'll be a reality in

heaven, but it's naive to believe it's going to happen

here. And, and often those who hold

those views have not studied doctrinal issues very deeply and

and do not believe that that type of study is even important.

They're not going to enjoy coming on Wednesday nights right

now. But there are things that we

believe at Inglewood, I promise you, and that we teach at

Inglewood that would be strongly disagreed upon by other churches

and vice versa. In fact, this coming Sunday, I'm

going to preach about one of them and it'll be an interesting

sermon. There will be people in the room

Sunday who will not agree with me.

I'm confident when I share what I'm going to share Sunday, and

I'm going to discuss some of these in the weeks ahead.

And so, as I stated earlier, differences in our beliefs can

cause tension. It can cause division, it can

cause separation. On the other hand, one of the

misjudgments of what we call true fundamentalism is this

legalism in the belief that all disagreements, no matter what

they're about, are first order and have the highest priority,

and we should cast judgement on one another.

So third levels are raised to 1st levels and everything is

overly urgent, right? And it can be very harmful, but

if you don't believe in denominations, you're just

missing a boat, for example. And I'm not, if this is

something you want me to be doing right now, I'm sorry, I'm,

I'm not thinking of an I'm not thinking of a Rocky Mount

example. OK.

But in one town where I pastored, they wanted to have a

citywide crusade and they wanted everybody to participate.

And sometimes you can do that Billy Graham kind of crusades

and things like that. But here's the problem.

When you do it locally, who's picking the preacher, who's

picking, who's picking the worship leaders, It's more

interesting. Follow me.

When is somebody saved? Do they have to be?

Do we need, do we need a big horse through right there at the

50 yard line on the football field?

Because if you're not baptized, you're not saved to a lot of

people. You with me or until you get

that second blessing of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and

speak in tongues, you're not saved.

I mean it, it doesn't take very long to understand.

There are some some lines that get drawn.

So it's hard. There's a book that was written

by a church growth guy and it's called Hyper Cooperativism.

It's really hard to do certain things together.

Now there are other things that we can to benevolence projects

and charity projects and and social ministry kind of projects

are easy to do cross denominationally.

But when you start getting, there's some of this, some of

the doctrinal issues, soteriology, which is the study

of salvation, pneumatology, the study of the Holy Spirit, you'll

see why they're denominations because are you, are you saved,

right? Then listen, I went to a certain

Group One time and I'm not trying to be disparaging, but I

got to be honest in this study, I went with a friend of mine who

belongs to a different denominational background.

We were at a student camp, and they're always going to have a

student camp by the lake. And so at the end of the that

night, people came forward making decisions.

They they physically grabbed them, rushed them to the cabin

to change clothes, rush them down to the lake so they can

baptize them. And I said, what if that girl

fell right now on her way to the lake and hit her head on that

rock? Would she be saved?

No, no, no, no. Not until she gets dunked in

that water. There are reasons why churches

have different names on them. So on the other hand, we can

also be too judgmental. And this goes way, way, way

back. Let's just listen to I just want

to read you the title. This is because we don't we

don't do good book titles anymore.

In 1670, the Puritan pastor Richard Baxter, just listen to

this book title. We just don't do this anymore.

The cure for church divisions or directions for weak Christians

to keep them from being dividers or troublers of the church with

some directions to the pastors how to deal with such

Christians. It's a page Turner to keep, you

know, couldn't put that one down, you know, but it was

basically he was basically discussing the way Satan seeks

to cause division. And he was actually in this

particular work coming through harsh judgement, how he causes

division through harsh judgement, a complete lack of

love, a complete lack of patience for one another.

So it's easy for us, according to Orland, to have a spirit of

self justification. And we kind of ride shotgun over

these secondary and third, third level issues where we're so bent

on those that we're going to, we're going to defend them and

write, raise them up to a high level, even when we're dealing

with people who are lost or people from other groups.

So it's one thing to disagree. That's inevitable to any, to all

of us. We're all going to disagree at

some point. But it's another thing when our

disagreement takes on an attitude of contempt or

condescent condescension or suspicion.

And so as John Newton once warned, self righteousness can

feed upon doctrines as well as works.

And so we've got to have a balance.

So the balance is hard. There's a balance between

doctrinal minimalism to where it doesn't matter at all, and

doctrinal separatism to where we put up walls and fight over

fight each other about it, right?

So there's this interesting balance.

And that's what we want to talk about in these weeks to come,

because you can find yourself in kind of a defensive mode rather

than a proactive Great Commission mode.

And in this world today, we don't have time for that.

This world's bleeding to death and we got to share the gospel.

And so this lack of discipleship can lead to a very narrow view

if we're not careful. And we want to be careful about

that. So I'm going to quote someone.

It may, it may be interesting to you that I'm going to quote him.

And then we're going to hit some scripture really, really hard.

I want to quote John Calvin for a minute.

And I don't, I don't do that. I'm don't, don't read into what

I just said. I just don't do that very often.

But out of John Calvin's Institute's listen to this.

I thought this was really good. Some fault may creep into the

administration of either doctrine or sacraments, but this

ought not to estrange us from communion with the Church, for

not all the articles of true doctrine are of the same sort.

Some are so necessary to know, that they should be certain and

unquestioned by all men, as the proper principles of religion,

such as God is. 1 Christ is God and the Son of God.

Our salvation rests in God, mercy and the like.

Among the churches there are other articles of doctrine

disputed which still did not break the unity of faith.

A difference of opinion over those non essential matters

should in no wise be the basis of schism among Christians.

First and foremost we should agree on all points.

But since all men are somewhat be clouded with ignorance.

That's a great line. But since all men are somewhat

be clouded with ignorance, we just don't write like this

anymore. Either we must leave no church

remaining, or we must condone delusion in those matters which

can go unknown without harm to the sum of religion and without

loss of salvation. So in other words, what do you

need to know to be saved? We got to stick to that, no

compromise. Some of these other things.

Let's not let it destroy us because the Church has to reach

this world. So here are my goals again, that

we might understand what we believe.

Now hear me very carefully. I teach this on any level.

The number one key to apologetics, it's called a

pause. The number one key to

apologetics is not that I understand what you believe.

The number one key to apologetics is that I know what

I believe. That's the first step.

That's more important. Now, I'm not saying don't study

the other. Sure, I am.

If I, if I have, if I have a Hindu neighbor, I want to study

Hinduism. I want to know something about

it. I want, I mean, when I say

study, I want to, I want to know some basic things that they're

going through so that I can make connections with them.

If I have a Buddhist friend, I need to understand Buddhism a

little bit. If I have a secular lost friend,

I need to understand where they're coming from.

But the most important thing is what do I I need to know what I

believe about this and what I believe about Jesus and a cross

and a resurrection. I can have no doubt about that.

And so this coming Sunday, I'm actually preaching, I'm starting

a new sermon series, as I've been sharing on Sundays too,

called Come Be the Church's Bride.

And I'm actually asking a series of very important questions.

And the question this Sunday is this, why should I be saved?

Why do I need to be saved? And I'm going to preach out of a

very interesting verse that, I mean, crazy verse is called John

316. You'll like it.

So. But then I'm also just to show

you, I'm going to talk about assurance of salvation Sunday.

I'm going to talk about the security of the believer and why

I believe that that's a doctrine that's true.

And I'll show you that from Scripture.

And so there'll be people there who don't believe they're coming

from a background where you can lose your salvation.

And I'm going to show you biblically why that's not how

this really works on Sunday morning.

So be here, invite friends. It would be an interesting time

for you to bring a lost person with you.

Now, what I want to do for a few minutes is I'm just going to

read Scripture because I want to show you how important this is,

Paul's writing to Timothy and Titus over and over and over and

over again. And I just want to share with

you some of the things that Paul is sharing with them and to show

you how important this is. So in first Timothy chapter 1

1 Timothy 1:3

verses 3 and 4, as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia

remained at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not

to teach what any different doctrine nor to devote

themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote

speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by

faith. Again, you had Jewish background

believers, you'd have gentile background believers and they

were they were bringing all kinds of stuff.

You had Pagan myths, you had Pagan beliefs, you had Jewish

Jewish law and and you talk about an interesting mix of

background. This is what's right now.

This is what's right. And so First Timothy 47, it gets

even more clear. Have nothing to do with

irreverent, silly. What myths?

Rather train yourself for godliness.

Listen, we live in a world today that chases after every myth,

every conspiracy theory, everything.

If it's on the interwebs, it must be true, right?

I mean, I have family members who live off of that stuff

Every. I mean, every time we have a

conversation, I'm hearing about the latest thing the

government's doing to get all of us right or the latest thing the

government's not doing to get all of us.

So it's always funny. By the way, COVID never happened

back where we're from, have you not?

You know, we're from Asian Oklahoma and the Ozarks, you

know, COVID never happened. They sat on the, they locked the

gate. They sat on the porch with

shotguns. They just wouldn't let it in.

Now, they were all sick with something, but must have been

malaria. Anyway, listen to this First

Timothy 6 versus 4 and 5. He is puffed up with conceit and

understands nothing. Now you see where he just

started? There.

So this is not it. He's not.

He's not giving an endorsement here.

He's puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels

about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil

suspicions, and constant friction among people who are

depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

Imagine that godliness is a means of gain.

So these false teachers who infiltrate the church, man,

they're just stirring stuff up with opinion and slander.

They're stirring stuff, anything but the truth.

They don't know the truth, so they make their own up and try

to stir it up. And then in first Timothy

1 Timothy 6:20

chapter 6, verse 20, oh Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to

you. I'm just you.

Just look at this repetition. Avoid the irreverent Babble and

contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

For by professing it, some have swerved from the faith.

So people are just making their own stuff up.

And that's what this world does. A world have a different truth

every day. And, and, and my truth's not

your truth and your truth's not my truth.

That truth's fine for you, but it's not good for me because

there's no absolute truth. There's no standard anymore.

And so they're just aimlessly drifting because there's

absolutely no objective truth in their minds, even though that's

really not true. Most people think murder's

wrong, Most people think rape's wrong.

Most people think incest is wrong.

So there are some basic tenets of absolute truth in most

cultures, but biblically it goes out the window.

Now he goes to Second Timothy. He's not done yet.

Second Timothy chapter 2, verse 14.

2 Timothy 2:14

Remind them of these things and charge them before God not to

quarrel about words which does no good, but only ruins the

hearers. Do your best to present yourself

to God as one approved. A worker who has no need to be

ashamed. Rightly handling the Word of

God. And often we stop right there

because we like that verse. We want to rightly handle the

word of God. Often we'll quote that verse,

but you got to go on to verse 16.

But avoid irreverent Babble, for it will lead people into more

and more ungodliness. So what's the priority of

teaching? What's the priority of truth?

It has to be based upon an authority, which is why we're

going to talk about why this must be your authority.

If you want to know how you got to deal with this lost world

today, you better know what you believe about this book.

And you need to know how to articulate that.

Because if you're going to share the gospel with somebody, you're

going to get engaged in some conversation.

You're probably going to quote a verse at some point.

You might even say the Bible says, and when we get into

personal evangelism, we're going to talk about things to say and

how to say them. But one of the things you might

say is, well, the Bible says, and the person could look you

right in the eye and say, who cares?

Why should I care what the Bible says?

And so you're going to have to help them understand why you

believe. It's essential that you have an

authority in your life, right? Because they don't.

That's the problem. They have no base authority, so

they don't have objective truth. Then he goes on in Second

Corinthians, excuse me, Second Timothy.

Who knew where that came from? Second Tim, looking right at

these words, Second Timothy chapter 2, verse 23 have nothing

2 Timothy 2:23

to do with foolish, ignorant controversies.

You know they breed quarrels. Second Timothy, chapter 4.

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

For the time is coming when you've heard this part, when

people will not endure sound teaching but have itching ears.

They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit

their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the

truth and wander off into myths. Does that not describe our

culture? That describes our churches

Listen, there are people who don't want to they don't want me

to stand up here and preach hard, hard biblical truth.

They just want me to scratch the itch.

They just want their felt, their perceived felt needs met.

And when I don't do that, I'm not feeding them somehow.

It's it's interesting how church is you can turn on turn on TV

and you can buy popular books that we'll help you be the best

person you can be today. But they won't they won't teach

you the truth. Then he talks to Titus, Titus

one verse 13. This testimony is true.

Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the

faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands

of people who turn away from the truth.

So there's an obvious audience connection here.

These Jewish either believers or people who are investigating the

church were causing trouble. Titus chapter 3.

Titus 3 · chapter mention

But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and

quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.

As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once

and then twice have nothing more to do with him, knowing that

such a person is warped and sinful, he is self condemned.

There's nothing like Paul writing, is there?

He's warped so. So these folks were creating

trouble in the church, obviously, because they're

arguing over Old Testament law principles, pushing them into

Christianity, much like we saw in our study of Acts to where

there were people who believe you have to become a Jew first

before you can become a Christian, when God is working

among the Gentiles and Samaritans, etcetera.

And so we recognize that we've got to be careful and we've got

to understand these essentials. So if you have people that that

don't know about Christ tuning into this series, they're going

to hear gospel presented in a very different way, in an

apologetic way to where I'm going to help people understand.

This is why I believe the Bible's the word of God.

This is why I believe that Jesus Christ is God and the Son of God

going to be pretty clear. And then we're going to talk

about those other levels. Quit fighting over this.

So in just a few chapters, think about how how condensed that is.

Just in a few chapters, in a couple of letters, we see Paul

warning them over and over and over and over again.

You think maybe Paul thought this was going to be a problem

and it is a problem and it could be a problem at Inglewood.

It can be a problem in Rocky Mount if we don't stay united in

our understanding. So we better pay attention to

this and our world's desperate for it.

So this is a great need for our discussion for the next few

weeks. In Matthew chapter 22, a famous

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

passage starting verse 36, Jesus is responding, a person asked

him teacher, which is the great commandment in the law, and he

said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your

heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the great and 1st commandment and a second is like

it. You shall love your neighbor as

yourself. So we see this prioritization.

We see this focus upon who you should be and how you should

love God the way you should and how you should love one another.

To have both this kind of this, this vertical and horizontal

command. But then in the very next

chapter, see again, often we just kind of pull verses out.

We don't read the whole book like we should, and so you need

to understand that the whole book ties together.

The very next chapter, Jesus shares 7 woes about the

religious leaders. So this, let me show you just a

little bit of that. You can read that whole chapter

23. It gets pretty heavy, but just

listen to verses 23 and 24. Woe to you scribes and

Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe meant and deal and cumin,

and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and

mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done

without neglecting the others, You blind guys, guides straining

out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

He just told them the way. They should love God and they

should love one another. It's not enough to know what you

believe. It's not enough to know the law

in their minds. It's got to be more.

You can have great knowledge and I've, I've worked at seminaries,

I've worked with some brilliant minds.

You can have great knowledge and you can articulate the greatest

doctrines and still be a useless hypocrite.

So the goal of this series isn't to just increase your knowledge.

Let's not miss that. The goal here isn't just so that

we can be smarter. The goal for these next few

weeks isn't just so that we can understand.

This is what I believe and this is what they believe and this is

what Inglewood believes. The goal of this series is to

change my life so that I'm applying these things in a way

that matters. See, the reason I want you to

understand the essentials is because we've got to share those

essentials out there and with one another.

We've got to make disciples. That's both internal and

external. And it's not enough just to

study. In fact, Paul kind of chewed out

the Corinthians. In Corinthians chapter 13,

verses one and two, he said if I speak in the tongues of men and

of angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging

cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers

and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all

faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I'm nothing.

So we're going to have to weave in and out of this balance,

aren't we? Of faith and knowledge and life

and love and how we actually live out this doctrine because

first we need to believe in and be defined by the gospel and

then let God teach us and train us to know how to apply our

knowledge in real life. So, so I want to challenge you

in these next few weeks to, to really begin to think about some

of the issues that we're going to focus upon.

Here's here's what I'm going to do over the next few weeks.

I'm going to come back and we're going to talk about the

primaries. We're going to talk about that

level 1, and then I'm going to give you some examples.

And then we're going to come back and we're going to talk

about secondaries and tertiaries, and I'm going to

give you some examples and we're going to see how together

certain things must be believed, certain things must be shared.

I promise you, if you have any question about your salvation or

somebody you know doesn't know about salvation, these are going

to be incredible times to come. They're going to hear it in a

way they might not have ever heard it before because of the

way it's going to be taught. And then we're going to talk

about some really interesting doctrinal issues.

And then we're going to kind of 0 in toward the end of what's

the unique identity of Englewood Baptist Church?

What does this church believe and why?

Why do we believe what we believe here?

Right? And where did that come from?

Because over the years, I've seen folks who have strayed from

that belief. And gotten in trouble, for

example, in that very first town where I was that very first

senior pastor in that little bitty church where all these

folks were angry at everybody. And they all got happy before

it's over with. Because, you know, we loved one

another and they were wonderful people.

And we all got along Kumbaya and sang together.

It only takes a spark to get a fire going.

But anyway, so, so we all got along and it was great.

But there was another church in town and it was the church that

used to be the very large church.

In fact, wrap your head around this.

This town had about 2000 people population.

It was a small town. You didn't, you didn't

accidentally go to this town. You, you had to mean to go to

this town. This town was not on the way to

anywhere. And the large church in town ran

900 people. So they were drawing people from

all across the county to come to this church.

And so it was, it was well known, it was a huge kind of

powerful thing. Right?

But then they decided somewhere along the way in their

interpretation of the Bible that they were going to become ultra

fundamentalist. And I'm going to throw a word at

you. You probably don't know what

this means. It's OK.

And landmark is istic. Landmark istic.

That's a phrase you may not know.

Landmark ISM. Don't worry about it too much.

Here's the basic premise. We're the only true church Now,

I don't mean churches like us are the only true church.

I mean this local church is the only true church.

See, now that becomes a little cultic, doesn't it?

Yeah. So.

So they're the only true church in existence anywhere on the

planet. And they somehow amazingly exist

in this town of 2000 people on the way to nowhere.

So this, this missionary who lived in town and wanted to

start a a true saying church. Well, not only were they

landmarkish. Now, I don't want to offend

anybody because you may, you may come from this tradition, you

may love this tradition. So we're some of these are

secondary and tertiaries. Don't throw anything at me.

Some of these, you know, essentialism, you're not.

They weren't the only true church.

That's that's a pretty essential issue.

But they were also a King James only church.

You could you you were not allowed to carry any other

version of the Bible on the property and they had people

checking it gets better. Ladies, you could not speak and

if you had anything to say, you had to say it through your

husband or your Deacon. Ladies, you couldn't wear pants

and written in their bylaws. Culottes.

We're not considered a skirt. There are pants.

No culots allowed. How many of you don't have a

clue what a culot is? Some of the younger ones.

Thank you very much. God bless you.

Go look that up later. You're like, really?

That was the thing. All right, So all this is going

on, right? I come to town.

Dun, Dun, Dun. My phone starts ringing off the

wall. It's like the bank president,

the mayor, the big businessman in town who are all members of

this church, They want to have a secret meeting at the bank

president's house. There's no joke.

So I had to sneak over there one night in the dark.

And I go, and then there's a room of them, and they're going

preacher. Because that's what you were

back there. Didn't matter who you were, what

you were, you're a preacher. It can't be true that we're the

only true church, can it? And these were deacons.

These were leaders in this church who had allowed a pastor

to kind of lead him down this road.

So we had a long conversation about the Bible, right?

And walked through all that. And, and I didn't think so.

And and then it was interesting because of course our church was

growing because we reached out and actually shared the gospel

with lost people and loved people because I got all these

angry people happy. If you're here and you're angry,

stop it. Be happy.

So we got them all happy. And so and so people are joining

us and, and, and it was interesting because eventually

the pastor there embezzled money and had an affair with somebody

and of course, split the church wide open.

The, the, the, the, but in the meantime, they used to send

teams to my house to share the gospel.

Remember that They used to send teams to my house to share the

gospel with, to me. Now, they knew exactly who and

what I was, but because I was over here and I wasn't over

there, I was lost. And so they actually sent,

they'd send adults and they would send send youth over to

see the gospel with me. They eventually split and I, one

of the ironies I thought, which I always thought was one of the

greatest things in the world, they split and started Harmony

Baptist Church out of it. This may seem like something

that's not important, but I promise you it is.

You'd need to come back next time because we're going to talk

about these essentials. We're going to talk about these

primaries and why. If you're going to deal with

people out there, you better know certain things.

And I want to talk to you about how do I, how do I articulate

these? How do I explain that to

somebody? How do I actually tell them what

I believe and why, which will help you greatly.

I've shared this with you before, but I told you a story

one time about when I was in Central America and I went into

a store and I was sharing with a man and I was just rattling off

my memorized gospel presentation, you know, 32 point

gospel outline, illustration number six.

And he interrupts me, starts laughing at me, which kind of

offended me. And he, and he asked that

question, why should I believe the Bible is God's word?

And he had the Quran, he had a Book of Mormon, he had teachings

of Confucius on a shelf right above his head.

He goes, Why should I believe your holy book is any better

than these? It's an important question.

It's hard to share the gospel without quoting Scripture.

It's hard to share the Gospel without talking about what God

said. And yet in this world today,

you've got to understand, A they don't care and B, they don't

even know what God you're talking about.

I've said this to you and I'm going to explain it real

quickly. I've said this to you several

times from the pulpit and I always say I'll explain it one

day. We now live and what I refer to

as a post postmodern pre Christian culture.

We are not even postmodern. We're weirder than that.

And you may not have any clue what you know what the word

postmodern means Nothing. It just means after modern.

That's all it means. It's a throwaway word that we

throw around like it means something.

Most people have no clue when they say postmodern what they're

talking about moderns built things.

So the key is to know what a modern, what modernity is.

What's modern 123? We build things.

We we accomplish. It's linear.

We start, we have a middle, we finish, we're builders, we're

going to accomplish something. They love science.

Science is going to answer stuff and you know, secular moderns,

etcetera. And that's where our society was

in the early to mid 20th century.

Very modern, right? We can do anything, John Wayne.

We can do it. Well, then you know what

happened in the 60s and 70s? Everything got weird and we

begin to question everything. So a modern says, well, you got

to build 123A. Postmodern is going to say why,

and they're going to say why to everything.

So in the old days you had loyalty to a church, you had

loyalty to a business. I'm going to work for the same

company my whole life. I went to the I'm going to go to

the same church my whole life. That is out the window.

That institutional loyalty doesn't exist anymore in

postmodernity. There's no objective, absolute

truth anymore because I get to decide my own thing. 911 changed

everything though, and it is 911.

That's a mark. Their studies.

We did a lot of research about 911 and after 911 there's now a

fear factor that came into our culture.

You got to think about, some of you aren't old enough to even

remember pre 911, but you didn't have to go.

You remember when you could walk all the way to the gate at the

airport, hug people as they walked off onto the onto the

gate, or you could stand right there with your sign as they got

off the plane. You remember when you could go

to a ball game and not have to go to a metal detector.

Everything changed. Cameras everywhere, checks

everywhere, bombings, shootings, all kinds of stuff. 911 So

there's a fear base. So in that fear, Americans

looking are looking for. This is very important.

Try to remember this phrase. It's a Ewart phrase.

They're looking for peer communities of truth.

This is why social media works. This is why reality TV is what

it is. I mean, who really cares about

keeping up with anybody, right? On TV?

But yet everybody does. I mean, people who have no

talent, people who've never done anything are billionaires.

Because we all watch him. I don't.

But people watch him to try to keep up, to see keeping up with

the whoevers or the housewives of wherever, right?

And This is why it works, because people are searching for

a group of people who they can agree with.

This is why certain talk shows work the way they do.

Certain celebrities work the way they do certain musicians, the

work the way they do. And this is social media.

This is why people can't be 10 seconds off of this thing.

And they're on they're, they're looking for followers.

Think about the wording. They're searching for followers.

Why? Because they're trying to put

together their own pure community of truth, because

there's this massive fear base. They're scared to death and I

need to have a group that agrees with my truth that I've created

or I can agree with the truth they've created.

So there's like sub religions all over the place in our

culture today and now we are much more like 1st century.

We're much more like Paul dealt with in Rome.

In our in our view of Christianity, we're pre

Christian. I'll never say the word post

Christian. Don't use that.

That's bad. Jesus is always going to sit on

a strum. There's never a moment we're

post Christ but we're pre Christian.

They've forgotten him, He didn't exist anymore.

They don't have any memory of it because they were never a part

of it. Now the problem is, is do you

think the majority of the inside the church is modern or

postmodern? Inside the church you got to

think about ages and where everybody comes from.

Inside the church, most of the church is still operating on a

modern basis in a post postmodern culture.

So that world out there can't relate to most of you and most

of what we do in here. They don't understand this.

We come in here and we assume they know what a worship service

is. We assume they know what to do

in here. We assume they know they can

come here. We assume that they know it's OK

to go to a small group. They don't know that.

Don't assume they know that. Not anymore.

Don't assume they care what this book is.

Not anymore. I was highly respected in the.

Community now you do national surveys we're we're respected

less than a used car salesman because so many of us have

failed see they don't trust. Us it's all fear based.

Everything's fear based, see, and all we want is your money.

Which is why I preached the sermon.

Last Sunday about you giving more money because that's all I

care about. Are you following me on all?

This. So there's there's the you.

You know, what we used to know is when you went to the

international mission field, you knew you needed to study

language. You knew you needed to study

culture. You knew you needed to learn

about the people. But we failed to make the same

connection right here, my friends.

You need to learn their language.

There's a whole another culture out there and they speak a

different language, they have different belief systems, they

have different habits, they have different everything and you,

you know, if you want to relate to them.

And we're going to talk about how do I develop a relationship

with something that I don't agree with as we move down the.

Road This is important. I need you to come back to

understand the essentials because in the essentials we

must have unity. In the non essentials we can

have liberty and charity, but we've got to know what we

believe about certain things so that when we proclaim it, I

mean, I can stand up here all day long and say trust in Jesus,

trust in Jesus, trust. And they don't have a clue what

I'm talking about. They don't know what it means

to. Trust in Jesus.

They don't know that. And so when you talk to people.

Out there, don't assume. They all went to church.

You might have thought that in your past.

Now everybody goes to church in Rocky Mount.

There's a church on every corner in Rocky Mount.

They're also all almost empty. That's not a.

Guess. And there are more.

And more people moving in here who have.

Absolutely no idea what goes on inside of these things, and so

we got to learn that. So let's get together and.

Let's do this. That sounds good.

All in favour, say aye. All right, this will be on

podcast. Let me pray for us.

Father, thank you so much for this introduction.

I know it's kind of lengthy. I pray it wasn't too boring.

Pray, Father, it was meaningful. Pray, Father, that the passages

of your word that we read will strike our hearts will recognize

that we don't have time to argue over myth and tradition and

opinion. That Father, we got to unite

together behind the essentials. And Father, we've got to share

the gospel and make disciples and teach about the Bible and

teach your truth not only to the world outside, but right here

inside to our families and to one another.

Well, Father, thank you so much for this good group here

tonight. For those listening online.

I pray, Father, that everybody will TuneIn next time and that

Lord will continue to grow together as we talk about how we

might train to be your warriors. Thank you, Father, so much in

Christ's name, Amen. Thank you all.

Thank. You so much for listening today,

and I also hope that you'll. Go to

[email protected] as well as our app and find many

other resources that will bless you and your families.

Thank you once again.