Transcript
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and welcome back to pastor plex podcast.
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I'm your host, pastor plec, and joining me within the studio is none of the machine gun nick some people are calling shotgun nick.
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It's kind of like a weird thing that's happened recently.
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So tell me about the advancements or maybe regression in your uh, I guess our firearms capabilities somebody just forgot machine gun Nick and went with shotgun Nick.
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And then somebody else Rob definitely was like oh, shotgun Nick.
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And so now we're yeah this is Now, you're just a breaching tool.
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Yeah, exactly no.
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I'm not, I'm machine gun, nick.
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All right, all right.
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Thanks, All right, and also in studios, none other than Pastor Muhammad Ali.
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Pastor Mo, glad you're here.
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You've just preached an awesome sermon on the exclusivity of Christianity.
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Is Christianity too narrow?
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How are you feeling this morning?
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Feeling great Afternoon?
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Yeah, All right.
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So here's kind of where we went with the sermon.
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We went through Matthew 7, essentially, and we looked at really narrow is the road that leads to life and wide is the road that leads to destruction.
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And talk to us about kind of where you went with that and how you address the question is Christianity too narrow?
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Yeah, so I think with that word narrow, my mind immediately went to that passage of the narrow road, immediately went to that passage of the narrow road.
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Uh, so just go there and then the then you kind of have to define what does Jesus mean by?
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narrow how narrow, is it?
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So then you kind of got to take him at his word.
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From another uh scripture, I went to John I'm the way, the truth, the life, um, and then I kind of wanted to look at the like objections for the exclusivity of Christianity, cause that's usually where that question even formulates, from Like is Christianity too narrow?
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And it's usually what about people who are sincere?
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What about all the other religions?
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This is claiming to be one of the thousands.
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That's correct.
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That's pretty like the guy that I quoted, like spiritually narcissistic.
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And the last one I actually think is like a genuinely good question what about those who haven't heard?
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So I kind of put that into the passage and then started talking about false converts and false prophets, because as soon as right after he says here's the road, it's narrow, then he starts talking about that.
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Yeah, so in light of those objections and the text, and then ending it on building on solid ground, yeah, let's talk through some of it.
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So you actually quoted this.
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Matthew 7.1 says don't judge unless you be judged, and usually that's where people go like whoa, whoa, whoa.
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Shouldn't we stop judging people and calling out untruth and calling out untruth and you quoted Joel Osteen.
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You quoted the church down the street that's PCUSA extreme liberal church.
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Tell me about why you felt that you need to address that in terms of like don't judge, but you.
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Actually, and how do you?
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When people say that, what do you tell them?
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Yeah, I think I needed.
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I wanted to address that in terms of like, don't judge, but you actually?
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and how do you, when people say that, what do you tell them?
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Yeah, I think I need to.
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I wanted to address that because, for those who are outside of the church who are saying, hey, why does Jesus get to be the only one?
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That's to be expected.
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Because you're not a follower of Jesus and, like scripturally, theologically, you are dead in your sin.
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You want to suppress the truth.
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You want to do everything that you possibly can so that your conscience isn't being like toggled.
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Yeah, so it makes sense that you'd want to oppose it.
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But to me, the second that you say, hey, I am a follower of Jesus, right, and then you say that Jesus isn't the only way, right?
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Well, now we got some problems and I think that's what Jesus is doing here.
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Yeah, Like, I feel like, because I think what happens.
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I think one of the things you said was great hey, if you want to use the verse, don't judge lest you be judged.
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Your response to that was keep reading, Just keep going.
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And because when you get to verse 13,.
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It says narrow is you have to judge between roads.
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Yes, you have to make a decision between roads.
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And then it says it talks about here's what a false prophet or false teacher looks like.
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You have to judge what that is by their fruit.
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And then here's what a false convert looks like.
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You have to judge that by their fruit.
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And so you are judging.
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And this is many times where Jesus, he says two things that seem to be opposed to each other, but they sort of form like I don't know.
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Call it a you know, like you don't go off.
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He's not an extreme either way.
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So he says, on one hand, come to me.
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All you are weary, heavy laden, I will give you rest.
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That's very comforting Love, that.
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But he also says, if you would come after me, you must take up your cross, die to yourself and follow me.
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And so those seem like to be juxtaposed together, almost oxymoronic.
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But they're not.
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It's just two sides of the same coin.
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And so, like I think that's what you're saying here is like don't judge non-Christians.
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God does that.
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You just tell them the truth.
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But as a Christian, you have an imperative to proclaim truth.
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Yeah, you got to, and even just like finishing that verse, I didn't get to.
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In 1 Corinthians 5, 12 to 13.
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At the end of 13, it says God will judge outsiders.
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It's our job to judge inside of the church.
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And it says remove, like it says purge, the evil person from among you.
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Yeah.
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And then it quoted that and I was like where the heck did that quote from?
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And it's Deuteronomy four different places where it says that in the book of Deuteronomy.
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So there's really this like intense focus on keeping the bride pure, which makes sense because you're the bride of Christ and you're supposed to represent him.
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And when you misrepresent him, what ends up happening is people look at you false convert, and they think that that's what God is like.
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And then you now that false convert is prohibiting people who want to come to know Jesus, because those people think that that's what followers of Jesus do.
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So it there's a lot of repercussions.
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So it makes sense Handle that false prophet, Because we're talking like the truth.
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We hold believers to the truth, to the standard Non-believers.
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We just tell them the truth and we don't judge them, because that's for God.
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But then when you have like a false prophet or someone who's spewing out these narratives that are false, do we handle them like a believer?
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Do we handle them like not a believer?
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yeah, not a believer.
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We don't have the same standard, because the cool thing with a christian is you're now saying, hey, we're on the same team, right right like.
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And the cool thing with people being on your same team, like when you play basketball, football or whatever, I'm sure for you guys in the army, like there's different standards and you can say something to your brother that you would never say to somebody else because you know y'all have the same goal, yeah Right.
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It's like, hey um, if somebody gets fat in the army, you're like, bro, lose weight.
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If somebody is like, gains weight outside of the military, you're like what's my other than?
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Like you're being bad for your health.
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That's a personal thing, but there's a standard in the army that we got to go serve together, fight together.
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I need you to be physically fit for my own sake, that's right, so that we can go fight the war.
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So I think that's kind of how it is with Christianity.
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It's like, if you're inside the body, I need you doctrinally, spiritually strong, because there's a battle to fight and we don't want to be spiritual weaklings or have no soul, especially when we're trying to, especially now and I say now, not like again.
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I think we made this comment several times it's not like the world is any worse than it was 100 years ago, 50 years ago.
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It's the same badness.
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It's just our culture, specifically in this of America, is we're in a negative space of Christianity, where to talk about Christ in the public square puts you in a negative light.
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And so I'm not saying we're not trying to punch and have a fight, but the reality is we need to stand strong and stand firm in what we believe and communicate, or else we're not being faithful to the watch that God's given us.
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And again, I think what that sometimes does is puts us in a light of what we're against as opposed to what we're for, and I get that it's way more fun to talk about what we're for than what we're against, but I think part of being what you're for also means you're against something.
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It's like every yes, you say you're saying no to something else.
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Okay, so let's go into some objections here.
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One of the things you said everyone wants to go to heaven, Everybody wants to kind of be a part of the in crowd, but people don't want to change.
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Why is that and why is change required for the gospel?
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Because there's no such thing as an unchanged Christian, because, uh, if the power of God, if, if God is all powerful, uh, you, you expect that he can change the worst of the worst or those who on the outside look like they were just fine, but he changes their hearts, but he changes their hearts.
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So you're, you're, if you're saying I don't need to change and I can still enter into heaven, it's very problematic in a lot of ways, but I think, from a personal perspective, if you, as you're saying, god doesn't have the power to change me.
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One, two, you're expecting a holy God to be in the presence of you, unchanged, sinful, sinful man.
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Um, so that's very problematic.
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And then, three, then your universality everybody that has ever lived is gonna get to heaven.
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You're saying that, like, why stop at humanity?
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What about Satan and his angels?
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Right, why aren't they in heaven?
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Because the second you say God should let everybody into heaven.
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You can't just limit it to humanity.
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That's not true universality, right?
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So your argument Universalist is that Satan should be in heaven with God.
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Good luck with that one, right, right?
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So you have to explain that one to me.
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Okay, now that's good.
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That has never crossed my mind, I think when we started this Explore God series with suffering and I talked about the cosmic battle in heaven of God and Satan kind of going at it, and it was the product of that conversation in heaven which then caused the suffering of Job, but ultimately for God's glory and Job's good.
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But when you don't see that, it's hard to comprehend it, apart from the picture we were given it post post the experience that Job had Talk to me then also about, yeah, genuine faith, people that are sincere why?
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Why are we advocating that people who are sincere are not going to be experiencing heaven if they're genuinely seeking?
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What do you think the response is for that?
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Yeah, so I think that um cause, that's the same thing with, uh, with false prophets.
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So I would say there's false prophets who are genuinely seeking and they're being lied to by Satan and he has them in their grip, but they believe they're doing a good thing, and there are those who know that they're doing a wrong thing and they continue to do it anyways.
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So I think so genuineness does not necessitate truth, because you could be a genuine, like I said, like serial killer Right, something could be wrong in your brain and you genuinely enjoy murdering other people.
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Yeah.
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That doesn't mean that what you're doing is right.
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Right, so we are, and we would look at that and be like dang, that freaking sick person.
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Right, we are just as sick with sin.
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So we can be genuinely seeking other idols and we have sincerity about it, like they're, you know, like zach was telling about the the uh, like buddhists in thailand, and they like the self-flagellation that they have.
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They sincerely do that, yeah, but they're worshiping idols.
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It's literally like demonic.
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Right, so you can be a genuine person who has been lied to by the enemy, and that's why the gospel is, to me, the most supernatural miracle is now you're opening their eyes Right To what it was that they genuinely sought after, and they're like man.
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So that's why it's like, apart from the power of God, even if it's genuine, it's obviously still not correct okay.
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So here's one of the things that, uh, this came up last night machine gun, nick, maybe you can kind of speak into it, because we were talking about these verses, uh, and and really kind of getting to genuineness, and we said there could be there's, faith without works is dead, and we pointed James for that.
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But I think this passage in Matthew 7 is works without faith is dead.
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Because what we keep looking at is didn't I cast out demons in your name and didn't I do all these great things?
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And he's going to say oh, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.
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But they had the deeds, because they're pointing back to something they did, yep, but they didn't have the genuine faith.
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And then in James you have someone who is saying don't tell me about your faith, and then your life has not been transformed at all.
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You've got to have it's not.
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Faith without works is dead and works without faith is dead.
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And so it's two sides of the same coin.
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Faith and works go together, yeah, so, um, I I think there's that part of that really struck me, I think.
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I think it was you brought it up.
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So what, what?
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What prompted that from you?
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that was joe that brought that.
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Oh yeah, that's right.
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Yeah, it was joe brought that up right, because I brought up about the uh, the bad fruit and the good fruit trees.
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Um, but looking at that like just just looking, because I'm what a two-year convert yeah, church right and if you'd have told me at the time of my baptism which I think y'all did was wait till, wait till, like the changes start.
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And I was like, yeah, right.
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And then like, but you know, you seriously start going through those changes, like I mean, right now, and I can no longer smoke a cigarette and and I used to smoke a pack a day, you know, and those are small, like getting through this conversation without dropping F-bombs, I mean, like all the things start lining up the more you start looking at God and asking for His grace and His blessings, and then that feeling that you know you are actually loved by, by this higher power who has unconditional love for you, and those change, like you can't, you can't stop that train of changes.
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Yeah, that's gonna happen, and I don't think, like some people, I don't think are even prepared for that, and the first time they hit like a bump, a speed bump, because you're going to go through those, those pains, those heart hurts that you've kept inside you for years, and it's going to get hard and it's going to get dark and like I mean you can run away from it or you just run towards it.
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And I think that's really what people need to experience as they complete that relationship with God and move in closer to it, and it goes hand in hand.
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You're not going to be the person that sees somebody stuck on the side of the road and be like, oh, I'll just drive past them and still be a person of God.
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You're going to feel a certain way.
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You're going to feel convicted that maybe I let my guard down for one second and see if this person needs help.
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Okay, so I'm going to shift to a couple public things that have happened recently.
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One is Kuwait's crown prince recently became a Christian and it's been blowing up my social media.
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And he's saying Jesus is the only way, coming from a obviously Muslim background, and I think it's sort of wild to kind of to look at this because he says first of all, I fully agree with the distribution of this audio file where he says I will be a Christian and I now declare if they kill me because of it, I will appear before Jesus Christ and be with him for all eternity.
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And so it's wild to sort of see that sort of radical supernatural experience and he's now speaking out as a Christian.
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I think across the Middle East you're seeing conversions happening through dreams, through um, all these like radical ways, as people genuinely seeking yes and god genuinely revealing yes.
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And so if there I think this we're getting back to the genuine question if you are genuinely seeking, you will find him yes and I think we.
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I don't want to put any disclaimers on that, but I think you would hope so, yeah I don't know that I could say universally.
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God has showed himself to every single person that has sought him.
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I am hopeful that he has and that he will.
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Then the question becomes is it unjust for God to condemn someone who quote unquote never got an opportunity to hear the gospel, to see a vision, to see a dream?
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And I'd say no to hear the gospel, to see a vision, to see a dream?
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And I'd say no because it is equally unjust for God to send down his son and for any to get an opportunity at salvation, and as it is for God to condemn sinful man to hell because we're sinful man.
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So both are to me mysterious.
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But as opposed to questioning God, why would that person in Papua New Guinea, who never heard the gospel, go to hell?
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I'm going to say you're gracious to allow even any sinners to enter into your presence, right, and I'm going to hope, on the goodness of God, that he will reveal himself to those who truly seek him.
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And here's one of the things that I think if you don't know Pastor Mo's story, pastor Mo may have come off like oh, arrogant or whatever, because I think I heard some groans like audio and I was like, oh man, these people are fired up.
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But knowing your story, you're not coming off as better than anybody.
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What you're coming off as is a person who's experienced the goodness of God and this has been a you.
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Becoming a Christian costs you.
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Can you talk to that?
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Just speak to that a little bit of what Christianity costs you.
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I'm not saying it might be quite as extreme as the crown prince of Kuwait, but sort, of, sort of.
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Yeah, yeah, much lower stakes.
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Uh, oh, man, it's just, it's family more than anything.
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I mean, there was, there was money, dad's rich.
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Uh, they came my grandfather was actually from palestine and got the heck out of the gaza strip because anybody over there who's not a a muslim extremist wants to get the heck out.
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So they got out, built for themselves a really nice business in Jordan, because there's oil over there, there's opportunities if you put in the work.
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And they just had money, man, they had a lot of real estate and like it's supposed to get handed down to your family.
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So, yeah, so there was money.
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But the biggest thing that I lost was the relationship for sure.
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Like telling my dad, hey'm not muslim, like I'm christian, and then telling him and sharing the gospel with him, um, you know, it wasn't honestly that hard.
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He was pretty chill, like he didn't hate me for it, he didn't whatever.
00:19:08.682 --> 00:19:13.902
He was cool, um, but yeah, I would say relationship yeah, because it's not like you're not as close.
00:19:14.182 --> 00:19:19.397
No, we don't talk Like not talk at all no Like.
00:19:19.417 --> 00:19:21.123
Do you text ever Wow?
00:19:21.304 --> 00:19:23.159
Yeah, so that's the hardest thing.
00:19:23.159 --> 00:19:25.945
But it's cool because I love how Paul describes the Christian life.
00:19:25.945 --> 00:19:30.426
He says sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
00:19:30.426 --> 00:19:38.222
So I feel like you get hit with both at the same time, like right after that and through whatever you go through, you're like man that sucked.
00:19:38.222 --> 00:19:46.919
But I know that Jesus is right here and he has gone through this thing more than I ever have and you get to co suffer with Jesus.
00:19:46.919 --> 00:19:49.912
It's a weird thing like finding joy in your suffering.
00:19:49.912 --> 00:19:50.694
Yeah.
00:19:50.855 --> 00:19:51.135
All right.
00:19:51.135 --> 00:19:53.642
So, uh, man, I really appreciate you sharing.
00:19:53.642 --> 00:19:54.324
You sharing that it does.
00:19:54.324 --> 00:19:58.400
It does make the message that much more, uh, powerful.
00:19:58.400 --> 00:20:04.509
When it's like this isn't something you're just preaching from, like, uh, you know, everybody I know loves jesus and that's just the way it is.
00:20:04.509 --> 00:20:05.576
This is something you're preaching from.
00:20:05.576 --> 00:20:12.576
Oh, this is a internal family struggle that has cost me and I'm choosing it because of the goodness of god.
00:20:12.576 --> 00:20:13.419
All right.
00:20:13.419 --> 00:20:21.015
So I got another, another question from our audience and it was this First off, thank you for a great sermon this past Sunday on the exclusivity of Christianity.
00:20:21.195 --> 00:20:22.441
In your sermon, you quote Alistair Begg.
00:20:22.441 --> 00:20:24.362
It was a relevant quote and aligned with truth.
00:20:24.362 --> 00:20:37.463
But because you quote Alistair Begg, I was wondering if you could weigh in on the recent controversy surrounding his recommendation to a grandmother to attend the wedding of her grandchild marrying someone identifying as transgender.
00:20:37.463 --> 00:20:44.021
Do you agree with Alistair Begg's advice and how should we handle weddings and other events involving simple practices?
00:20:44.021 --> 00:20:49.625
And if Alistair Begg is in error or any other pastor speaks in error, how should we handle the rest of their ministry?
00:20:53.101 --> 00:20:53.280
Yeah.
00:20:53.280 --> 00:21:10.699
So what Alistair Begg did in his uh criticism I agree in the sense that he asked people to be consistent, because his basic thing was like, hey, if you're saying you're not going to go to a gay marriage, well would you go to a marriage where someone who is christian is marrying a non-christian?
00:21:10.699 --> 00:21:13.728
That's a sin, so would you go to that?
00:21:13.728 --> 00:21:17.817
No, uh, and I appreciate that he's asking for that consistency Right Now.
00:21:17.817 --> 00:21:29.996
His solution to uh, to what he's urging people to do, I think, is completely erroneous, because my standard for attending a wedding is the same for officiating a wedding.
00:21:29.996 --> 00:21:36.126
So I will not officiate or attend a Christian who's marrying a non-Christian right.
00:21:36.126 --> 00:21:41.663
I will not attend a homosexual union because it's not a union right.
00:21:41.663 --> 00:21:46.403
I will attend and officiate two people who know that they're not Christians and they're not looking to be Christians right.
00:21:46.403 --> 00:21:54.597
And I will officiate and attend two people who are Christians and I can like vouch for yeah, they're, they're followers of Jesus, yeah.
00:21:54.597 --> 00:21:59.564
So I think he's just asking for consistency, but I think that his solution is problematic.
00:21:59.875 --> 00:22:02.944
Is that standard on an unequally yoked marriage?
00:22:02.944 --> 00:22:05.544
Is that across the board, or is that just yours?
00:22:05.544 --> 00:22:12.721
How do you justify these two people One's a Christian, one's not a Christian and you're like, eh no.
00:22:13.163 --> 00:22:17.961
Yeah, yeah, because the Bible says don't be unequally yoked, and what he's specifically meaning?
00:22:17.961 --> 00:22:20.974
A business partnership, but that definitely relates to marriage.
