Cutting Room Floor: Good Dirt

Hey, what's up, everybody?

This is Justin, and welcome to a little like bonus podcast we call the cutting room floor.

This is for content that didn't quite make it into the message.

I'm here with Madison.

Hey guys.

And so Madison, if you don't know, is actually a big part of the message writing process.

He's our youth pastor, and whatever we're teaching in the big room, he's often teaching to the junior high students or maybe the high school students.

And so we we do a lot of brainstorming together.

And every single week there's something that doesn't quite make it into the message, but we almost wish it could have.

And that was the case this week with the message that we uh that we entitled Good Dirt.

Good dirt.

So if you haven't listened to that, make sure you listen to that first because it'll make a lot more sense if you have the prerequisite knowledge of what the good dirt message was about.

But if you're like that person who sees the warning label that says do not operate heavy machinery while on this medication, and you're like, nah, I'm fine, then by all means continue listening.

The gist of the good dirt message was that uh Jesus said that that you know you cast the seed and there's four different types of people, each represented by a different type of soil.

Some some get it, some get the message of Jesus, that's the seed, some some don't.

And uh that's it.

Yeah, so uh what didn't make it into this message?

I think the main thing that I cut from this one um just had to do with the concept of of altering the seed.

You know, um, we live in a time where, like in America, we're in a post-Christian society.

So there's very few people who've never heard the message of Jesus, very few people completely unfamiliar with church.

Now they don't go to church.

Like they don't have and all you gotta do to know that is like watch a Hollywood movie in which there's a church scene.

And it's always the most stereotypical, like like at some place in Kentucky.

Yeah, well, it's either it's either like a redneck, like intense, like Oh yeah, like intense, like there's not even electricity.

Like it's just some guy in a suit, like yeah, saying racist things, like this, you know.

But on the other side, there are a lot of movie depictions of like intense like Catholic churches being very formal.

You'll see that.

Um, and there have been very few depictions of what I would call like modern American non-denominational churches.

There's a movie called Saved that that does that, but it's more like youth camp like Christian school, and that they do like rock music, but it's really cheesy and hokey.

Um but yeah, so so there's just, you know, um my point is we live in a post-Christian society, everyone sort of thinks they know what the church is all about, but they've they've already kind of formed their conclusions, right?

And so recognizing that, churches in America today have a really interesting job.

It's not like we're going and sharing this fresh message that no one's heard before.

And there's a lot of people who have rejected it because of preconceived notions, and so the temptation that I think a lot of a lot of churches fall into, and it's well intended, is to alter the seed, to change the actual message of Jesus in an attempt to sort of like make it work on hard soil, if that makes sense.

To force it into the ground.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Then think about something like um do you know anyone that has an allergy to like wheat or anything like that?

You know any people have gluten allergies or whatever?

Yeah, I I I do.

Do you?

I don't.

You don't?

No.

Well, well, no, I I know people with the allergy.

I don't have it.

I don't have any allergies.

I don't have it either, but now I'm I'm not like an expert on this, so um, but from from my understanding, a lot of the reasons that we have all these these food allergies that are developing at a higher rate is because we have genetically altered.

Oh, yeah.

There's only like four versions of what used to be like thousands of varieties of wheat now.

Right.

Now it's just like, oh, we only have this one version, so if you're allergic, you're out of life.

No more wheat for you.

And yeah, that's what it's and that's because and it was well intended.

The idea was, well, if we can alter the wheat, make it fuller, make it, you know, whatever, we'll be able to feed more people, it'll be more cost effective.

But what's happened over time is that that alteration has actually led to some really negative things.

And when it comes to this parable that Jesus tells, I mean, there's no way to, no way around it.

He's he's literally saying not everybody's gonna receive the message of Jesus, his message.

Not everyone's gonna, not everyone's gonna receive it.

Um, but I think there's this tendency, like a well-intended but somewhat prideful tendency for us to be like, no, no, no, no.

But we we can, if we just find the exact perfect approach, if we can find a way to like remove all the parts that really offend people today and whatever, we we can actually create a version of the message that does work and everyone's gonna be fertile soil.

Right.

And that's just not what what he's saying.

Yeah, and I think it's important to kind of clarify the message of Jesus being people are broken, and Jesus steps in between our brokenness and God, creates a way for us to be with God and completely transforms our life, leaving us or taking us into a completely new direction.

And so people want to alter that seed, meaning, hey, maybe your life exactly the way it is right now.

Actually, it's perfect, just your life plus Jesus.

Sprinkle on some Jesus.

Yeah, a little bit of a little bit, yeah.

I always kind of think about like a cup holder.

Like if I buy a car, um, and I haven't done that a whole lot in my life.

I haven't you when you ever if you shop for a car, by the way, you feel super important.

You're like, ooh, but they want you to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Well, I I don't know what cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I'm not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a car.

Um but like I don't ever buy a car because of the cup holder.

It's nice, it's like a really nice feature to have a convenient cup holder, but it's it's such an auxiliary thing.

Um, but a lot of people have this sort of cup holder mentality about Jesus because it's like, oh, I got my life, and look, there's some Jesus too, and it's so nice and convenient every once in a while.

And that's in large part because you're you're right, that there's there's a version of the gospel that people have received, and it's kind of like have a little add on some Jesus.

You know, it's but he's not the not the core, not the not the engine or whatever.

Um yeah, you know, like the message of Jesus is offensive, and it's it's funny because it's both the most encouraging and the most offensive thing in the world.

It's encouraging because it's like, hey, you don't have to be the one that does this.

Right.

You you don't have to earn it, you don't have to do enough good to make God happy with you.

You're completely forgiven, totally justified.

We were actually having a conversation earlier today about it's not just that you're forgiven of all your sins, that you're also given the righteousness of God.

There's like a replacement that's insane that I'm just as good as Jesus.

That's good news.

That's good news, right?

But what makes the gospel challenging is that to receive it, you have to kind of come to the end of yourself.

And you have, I mean, like I'm I talked about it on Sunday in the message, the phrase Jesus said in Matthew 4.17, it's kind of like it tells us what the thesis statement of his ministry was: repent of your sins and turn to God, for the kingdom of heaven is near.

Well, when you tell people to repent of their sins, in other words, rethink, like change, um, you're assuming that they have sin.

And people don't like to admit that.

A lot of people want to admit, well, I it's not sin for me.

You're saying I'm sinning?

You're like, yes.

But if you understand what sin is, everyone, everyone does.

Sin is missing the mark.

It's not being, um, I heard a uh there's a J.I.

Packer, um, he's written a lot of stuff, and there's a quote that he has J.I.

Packer.

Written a lot of stuff, written some books.

Um, but he has a quote, and I'm I'm paraphrasing it, but it's basically like none of us are as bad as we could be, but none of us are as good as we should be at the same time.

And so sin is just not being, it's not just doing bad things, it's just not being who you could be.

Right.

Um, and we're all we're all that.

And so to really receive the message of Jesus, there has to be an admittance of guilt, essentially.

Like, yeah, I've I've messed up and I don't I don't have it in me to earn heaven.

I'm not good enough.

Um but but there's parts of the gospel that just don't mesh with American culture.

And so what you see happen a lot is churches really, really like try to kind of well let's sort of custom create a with good intention.

With good intentions.

I no, no, the idea is because and and I think that it in some glances it's like it almost seems like it's effective because you will see a lot of very, very large churches um that have have sort of done that, and I I can't say that they have really done that per se.

The perception though is like, well, my here's here's what I would say if you listen to this.

This is not about this is not church bashing, but okay.

If the message of Jesus ends up being living your best life now, not calling out anyone specifically.

Well, you are when you say that.

Um but uh but no, if here's if I think a good filter for me, Francis Chan has this filter of if I handed you a Bible and you read it and believed it, what would you what would you walk away with?

And if if you go to a church for a year, okay, and you never there's no conviction, right?

If or if the only conviction is about you giving money to the church or serving on a team, right?

If you go to a church for a year and there's no there's no real talk about the Holy Spirit, Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit all the time.

If you go to a church and there's never any mention of hell or or judgment, none.

I'm not talking about hell, fire, and brimstone, you're all going to hell, but there's just no it's like it doesn't even exist.

Um and we we used to be that in a lot of ways.

Well, that's so far from the way Jesus actually preached.

As Jesus followers, our message should line up pretty closely with his message, and his message was a message of love.

God loves everybody, um but at the same time, he loves everyone, but Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father through him.

So it's both, hey, there's this amazing good news.

Um God's love is infinite, you can't even experience it all, and he loves you and he wants you to have it, but you have to enter through Jesus.

Yeah.

And that entering through Jesus means that you confess, that you you come to the end of yourself and say, I am in desperate need of help, and you receive from him.

You can't you can't be good enough and demand it.

You can't say, I've I've earned it.

And that that's an offensive message.

So life application moment is like, how do you know if somebody uh in your life or at your church or wherever is altering the seed, like is changing the gospel?

Like, how do you know?

Well, you have to know the gospel, you have to know what the message is.

And I think one of the big challenges we have in the church today is that a lot of a lot of Jesus followers just don't really know.

Like you ask them, hey, what I'll hear people say things like, and I've used this example before, um, God loves me and wants me to be myself, you know, and it's like, yeah, sort of.

You're you what you're doing there is you're taking really popular statements in our world, like Disney songs, and then you're taking the gospel, you're merging them together.

Jesus actually never says that.

He says, anyone who wants to be my disciple, my follower, must uh take up their cross and deny themselves.

And we're told that God wants to make us entirely new people, he wants to make us new creations.

And so that that you have to know the gospel, you have to know what Jesus says, and it's and that just means read read the Bible.

Um read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Read the teachings of Jesus, read Revelation, the teachings of like the first part of Revelation, Jesus talks a lot.

You see his Him there too.

And the New Testament, I mean, the whole of Scripture, absolutely, but it's not it's not hard to read it.

Some parts are hard to understand.

Um but like my wife's really hard to understand.

But you make an effort.

I make an effort, you know.

I just I want to.

And uh so I think you have to know the gospel.

And I'm again, there I I I'm not someone who gets online and posts this church or that church has altered the it's it's a nuanced message.

So sometimes you're gonna focus on different parts.

My point is that if if you're at a place for like a year, that's why I say if you're in a place for a year, and there's no mention of things that Jesus talked about frequently.

Right.

He frequently talked with the Holy Spirit, and that we we need the Holy Spirit in us, and and the Holy Spirit will do the He promised the Holy Spirit, um, there's no mention of of like sin and the need for for like if that that just doesn't line up with the gospel because that's not the message Jesus preached.

And so you you you shouldn't like and the same is true on the other side, by the way.

If you're if you're at a church and all the person ever does is teach uh damnation and hell and all this stuff, that's not what Jesus did.

Right.

It should just, it should it should hopefully be pretty close to Jesus as much as possible.

Um the point is we shouldn't, we we have to recognize Jesus wasn't lying to us when he's when he taught this parable that there's there's never gonna be a hundred percent of people that get it.

Yeah, um and we can't think that we we can be the ones who figure out the perfect way um because what we actually do when we do that is we we present people an incomplete gospel, and that just leads to confusion.

Yeah.

And it's challenges when those people that aren't gonna get it are in your family or are your neighbor or is a friend from back in the day, and you you want them so badly to be part of this and to accept it.

But at the end of the day, Jesus gave us that kind of litmus test to say, like, hey, not everybody, this is not for everybody.

I mean, it is for everybody, but not everybody will receive it.

And so I think it's really challenging, and and the the well-intentioned side is like, I want everyone to know Jesus, but Jesus gave gave us that like And God wants everyone to know him.

He says that he wills that no one would perish, but all would have everlasting life.

And yet a third of Jesus' parables are warnings, and he's saying, like, look, you know, like don't if there's no there's nothing to warn people about why I have so many warnings.

Um I think a great example, well, let's get really practical, is the idea, the idea that like everyone is gonna go to heaven.

Everyone.

Well, they're like what people will do is they'll take a specific scripture, like all knees will bow and and all tongues will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And they'll be like, CC, that everyone, and we like that idea.

I would love the concept of everybody goes to heaven, no matter what they, whether or not they confess their faith in Jesus, whether or not no matter what, everyone's gonna go to heaven.

There's no way, use that Francis Channing, there's no way to pick up the New Testament, read it, and close it and be like, sweet, everybody is in heaven.

There's no no one needs to worry about anything.

That is not you, you wouldn't even, you would not even think that.

Right.

And yet you have people today who, by the way, it's a very new development, and you know, it's here we are 2,000 years in, and people are like, no, no, no, no, everyone's had it wrong from the beginning.

From the very beginning, it's like a game of telephone where the person that's a hundred down the line is the first one to get it right.

If every sentence starts off with, well, actually, then your red flag should be a good one.

Yeah, and if people claim to have some special knowledge that I mean, I use I think that telephone analogy is really good.

Like the cool thing about the New Testament is that it was written really, really close to the events that actually happened.

Um and so the message, like the I like the idea that the message has been altered, and and you know, no, like we are we are crazy confident in the accuracy of the New Testament more than any ancient document.

So we know what the message was.

Um and we just can't be ashamed of it.

We just have to preach it with love.

I'm not saying like some people will preach and they'll have this sort of mentality of like I'm about to bring the word and y'all need to get ready to be.

I don't want people to be offended.

Yeah um, but it is by nature a challenging message, but also an encouraging one if received properly.

The point is the condition of your heart.

Not everyone's ready to receive it.

And if they're not, you pray that that God changes their heart, you know.

Um so yeah, so I like the main thing that that didn't quite make it.

I was gonna go on a little tangent about how important it is that we don't alter the the message.

The point of this parable was not so so so alter the seed.

I'm not talking about the approach, by the way, it's important.

I'm not talking about churches that have modern buildings and modern we do, modern worship.

No, I think the the thing is you cannot you cannot change the seed and still have it be the truth and gospel of Jesus Christ.

Like it's not talking about the it's not even the same parable.

I'm not talking about the the approach, the the method, like the feel.

I'm talking about it's good to be creative, it's good to um, but I'm talking about altering key aspects of the message.

And even like the I use the hell example, the Holy Spirit's probably the biggest one with me.

I mean, Jesus, there are churches who will not talk about the Holy Spirit because they think it's weird and they don't want to weird people out.

And like, I get it that there are a lot of weird people who have have used the Holy Spirit as a weirdness is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

You don't, anytime someone who uses the Holy Spirit as an excuse, weirdness um makes you feel uncomfortable.

Yeah, you know, you're God has given you the ability to make people squirm every time you talk.

Um no, no, no, no.

But there are people who use the Holy Spirit as like a covering for their weird behavior, and uh that's not I'm not saying that the Holy Spirit doesn't do weird things weird to us, like speaking in tongues or whatever, but Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit was like the key to our success, that God would give us his spirit.

And if you're somewhere that we don't really talk about the Holy Spirit because we don't want to, well you're you're altering the scene.

That's a huge aspect.

I'm talking about really core aspects of the message of Jesus.

Um and uh yeah, so we just it just didn't make it into the message would have been too long.

Well, you had a question about some like one little part of the message.

Point of clarification.

Yes.

Um at some point in the message, so this is kind of moving on from the main cutting room floor, but you had mentioned that the world is is gooder than it has ever been.

And you're saying that the Bible doesn't teach that it's gonna get worse and worse and worse.

And then when it's at its breaking point, Jesus comes back.

And that was my always my impression as to like what the the tribulation is, and there's lots of um popular Christian understanding of like, hey, the word the world is gonna get pretty terrible right before Jesus comes back.

So where did that that sentence come from?

What were you trying to communicate in that in that moment?

In that moment, were you changing the seed?

Yeah, I was changing.

Well, no, I I don't think so.

No, number one, I'll just say I'm not, I would not sit here and say I'm some massive expert on the word would be eschatology, like end times.

End times stuff.

Um but what I will say is we live in a in a I was talking about the worries of life.

Jesus says, you know, the the third soil, that people get consumed with the worries of life, the lure of wealth, the desire for other things, and the worries of life.

I was very much in mind, had in mind like political stuff.

Yeah, things are really politically charged.

Like we are recording this early August of 2019, and we're at a time where like I don't think there's ever been a time where the two major political parties in America have have just outwardly called the other party pure evil.

Like, you're murderers, you're racist.

There's no middle ground.

No one, there's like no, yeah, there's no there's just none.

And you see everyone's moving to extremes, and it's it's so no one trusts, and people that get really wrapped up in that think that half the country is just I think we're on the brink of civil war.

I don't know.

And maybe, maybe five years later, people were like, oh, the civil war, the second civil war happened, and we were wrong.

But the the point is this we can get really consumed with worries.

Um when Jesus first announced, like kind of stepped on the scene big time, uh, he's preaching in a temple, and he basically says, he reads a prophecy from Isaiah about the time of God's favor, and he says the time of my of that favor is now.

And we have never lived in a time that has been globally.

I think it's really important because Americans are always like comparing something to some golden age, but that didn't exist.

Yeah, never like, yeah, oh yeah, like the 50s were great.

I mean, civil rights were bad at all, but you know, if you were the right color, then it was an awesome time to live.

Like, come on.

Um But there's actually there's never been a time.

If you look at when Jesus when he lived when uh on the earth, the the life expectancy in the world was like 40.

That was the life expectancy.

People didn't age faster, but you just you just died.

It didn't die.

It didn't take much to kill you.

It doesn't take much to kill you if you don't have antibiotics.

I mean it was a very, there's no like people died all here.

We are living in a day and age where the life expectancy is double what it was when Jesus was alive.

The quality of life.

I mean, even this and this sounds really flippant in the wrong context, but even poor people today, in in our nation, take for example, poor people have better quality of life than like usually when we say someone's poor, we don't mean we often mean that they don't have a lot of the nice niceties of life.

Right.

Not that they're they haven't had a meal in five or six days.

I think like it wasn't but a hundred years ago, like the vast majority of the world lived in abject poverty.

Just so in in many ways, ever since and and you actually look historically, it really is from Jesus' time onward, you're seeing you're seeing quality of life gradually improve.

Um, you know, not that not that people are better.

I think that the way people's character has always been really bad.

I mean, in Noah's time, in the Old Testament, it was so bad that God looks at the earth and he's like, there's only one guy that I even want to save.

He's like, I regret having done this in the first place.

It's it's that bad.

But there is this idea in Christian, and I think it's been popularized by books and and like certain end times obsessed.

Certain Kirk Cameron's now you you let your you let your biases Kirk, if you're listening, I loved Growing Pains.

I thought it was great, and actually, Ray Comfort, who Kirk Cameron partners with, I've listened to him and he's got some good things to say.

Sweet.

Um, but uh it's better because Kirk Cameron came to your school.

Yeah, it was awkward when you were in high school.

That'll be a different cutting room floor.

It's a whole different story, yeah.

Um, but there's this idea that like it's never been this bad and it's gonna get so bad.

That's not really the story that the gospel tells, is that it's just gonna be so, so bad.

There are definitely seasons where it gets really intense.

I think what happens a lot, people take Matthew chapter 24, where Jesus is talking about two things.

Matthew 24 · chapter mention

There's actually, here I'll pull it up real quick.

Um, this is like an end times heavy scripture that a lot of people kind of there's two questions the disciples ask.

He's talking about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and uh, which was something Jesus talked about.

The the disciples couldn't imagine that.

Like, what in the world?

Um and they ask him this question two questions.

They say, number one, tell us when these things will be.

And these things are what Jesus just talked about, the destruction of the temple, whatever.

And then the second question, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?

And so what happens after that, people will often just read it as As if Jesus says all of it he's talking about the end times.

But a lot of what he's answering here is that first question like, when will these things be?

And he's talking about the destruction of the temple.

And right after, I mean, I think it was 60 something uh AD, is when the second temple was destroyed.

Jerusalem was completely destroyed.

And it was, there had never been a time in Jerusalem that was that intense.

I mean, people starving to it was they were barricaded by the Romans, it was complete siege for years.

And so some of the intense language he's using is applying to that time.

And then other things he's talking about, when you actually look at what he's saying about the end of the age, you know, this the second coming, um, he says, you know, hey, like, there's gonna be, you know, there's gonna be like wars and talk of wars and stuff's gonna happen, but like, don't worry about it.

That there's that stuff, you know, it's gonna come suddenly when no one really knows.

Like a thief in the night.

Like a thief in the night.

And you're so you're not gonna know.

Not even he said, not even I know.

Right.

Um, but we live in a culture where people are obsessed with it's it's now, it's right now.

And maybe it is.

I mean, he said that 2,000 years ago, it's sooner now than it was then.

It could be now, it could be in 5,000 more years.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying everything's great and perfect and awesome, that there's not evil in the world.

There's tons of evil, there's tons of stuff.

That's why we strive to spread the gospel.

But but this idea that it's all going down the toilet and it's never this is the low point of history.

I mean, you just can't you can't look at history and make that claim.

You just can't.

You know, and the and the and a big part of the reason why is the is the movement of Jesus.

If you look at the nations in the world that have the best civil rights, that have the best uh equality among sexes, that have uh a lot of wealth, almost all of them have a point in their history.

They may be kind of in a different season now, but the message of Jesus took hold and and it was a nation that had those types of values where we value uh every single person as equal.

You know, that's a Christian message.

There's no slave nor free, there's uh male nor female.

Um, you know, that that language, uh no Jew nor Gentile, that was a very what do you mean that everyone's equally important?

Like, yeah, that was a revolutionary message.

And uh and so yeah, it's it's not like there's a a biblical commentator that writes that the world is not heading to disintegration but consummation.

Um there is language in the Bible that says when Jesus comes back, things are gonna be like super intense, right?

That's very awesome.

Yeah, but not that it's just a gradual degradation.

Cool.

Well, thanks for the point of clarification, and I guess this kind of wraps up.

That being said, it's never been as bad as it is right now.

I mean, all I gotta do, every time I turn on the news, it's this is it.

It's never as bad.

Also, I hear if you do the math just right, if you take all of the numbers from the Bible and add them up in the right numbers, yeah, it becomes May 21st, 2019.

So oh wait, we missed it.

So no no, so donate now, and we will send you a uh tribulation survival package.

Tribulation bucket for four nine for only$49.

We'll send you a bucket with everything you're gonna do.

Uh Rapture pet insurance so that you're here There are people out there.

It is, no, it's a continuing business that actually makes a lot of money.

It's like we will watch your pets after you Christians get raptured and we will purposefully not become Christians so that we'll definitely be here and your pets.

Oh man.

My pets definitely aren't saved.

I don't think they actually have any pets.

But uh yeah.

So that that's really it.

Um and I think this is something we'll probably start doing more often.

Yeah.

Just having these little little post messages, a little extra content for anyone that wants a little extra.

Which might be like five people.

Well, thank you for listening.

You five.

You five.

All right, this is it.