Wretched Radio begins in three, two, one. I use the Complete Idiot's Guide to the Bible. Unqualified. Why can't my kids come into the service? Because we have PG-13 services. Unqualified. That has a nice ring to it, unqualified. I've always felt that way. It wasn't a compliment. Junior Church has taken over. It's designed for elementary kids or junior higher. Who doesn't feel unqualified? It's time for Wretched Radio with Todd Friel. Go ahead. Just send your apologies to me here at Wretched Radio. I'm sorry? Oh wait, that's right. This is Wretched Radio. For those of you who mocked me for being a bit of a germaphobe, using the wet wipes on counters, germ killer on the hands, go ahead. Just send your apologies now. I'm waiting. Wow! I'm sorry you're a germaphobe? I'll accept that. That's as much as I could anticipate, frankly. The world seems to be in a bit of a panic over coronavirus. What is the Christian to do? Will I pontificate the Health risks? No, I'm not a doctor. I don't even pretend to play one on radio. I'll leave that up to other people, but the government has determined it's a pandemic, and that raises some questions for Christians. How now do we live in light of the pandemic of the coronavirus? Questions like, do we cancel church? the governor of Kentucky suggesting churches should, you know. In Seattle, in the county where there have been more deaths than any other county, out of the 11 deaths in the U.S. of A, 10 of them have taken place in King County out in Seattle. And so the PCUSA, a denomination that's going astray the UCA, USA version of the Presbyterian Church, not America, USA. The leaders there are saying, hey, We should shut down churches, and they're going to on Sunday. Should Christians not assemble as we are commanded to do on Sunday mornings? I now would like to lay down the definitive Christian response. You don't need to go anywhere else. I'm just going to give you, here it is. This is the way we should all be living in light of coronavirus. Should we cancel church? What about communion? Do we shake one another's hands? Do we go to work at all? Here's the biblical answer. This is just gonna settle at once and for all. whatever that's it whatever different christians are going to have different takes on this subject and i don't think we should be making a law where there isn't a law perhaps and we certainly shouldn't be shooting other christians when we disagree on issues like This, which seems to be an increasing trend in the circular firing squad we call evangelical Christianity. I am seeing this more and more, and it's increasingly grievous. It seems there are no rules anymore about judging anybody for anything. You say two wrong words, and rah! You say something that doesn't maybe just hit it exactly in the bullseye, and you're out of here, pal! What happened to a little bit of grace for our brothers and sisters who maybe don't take the exact position on a secondary or in this case maybe a tertiary issue? Yikes, we sure do whiff some chum in the water and we are just all over it. Can't we do better than cable news? Nevertheless, there are some people who are already at war over issues about coronavirus. Should you cancel the church service? My answer is that's up to you. Would I, where I am sitting, do that? And the answer is no. Would I call somebody a sinner who didn't show up on Sunday because they had concerns? Absolutely not. There are people who maybe do have a compromise system. Maybe seniors who tend to be the people who suffer the most from this and experience more of the death from this, they're afraid and they don't want to go on Sunday morning. Could it be a sin? It might. It might just be prudent. It might just be wise. And I would not call somebody into church discipline because they didn't go to church for a couple of weeks, nor would I mock somebody for wearing a mask, nor would I say to somebody who's looking at the communion train going, yikes, um, how is that prepared? Maybe we should be wise about some of those things. Put on gloves, wear a mask if you're preparing the communion. Maybe just doing fist bumps might be the new holy kiss of the 21st century. Be wise about stuff. Make a decision for yourself, for your family, but let's not slaughter one another in the process. And to that end, this is gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt a lot. A quote from Martin Luther on the subject that I think will guide us through the subject of it. Snidely whiplash just waiting in the bushes Martin Luther dealing with not just coronavirus, which seems to be seems to be a flu like Virus was dealing with plagues He was dealing with stuff. It will a much higher likelihood of taking you out Here's what he said. I shall ask God mercifully to protect us I think we should too. Should we quote Psalm 91 as if that is our bibbidi-bobbidi-boo verse? No. No, we shouldn't, despite what a lot of false teacher hacks are doing these days. I'm looking at one of them right now. Here's his sermon series based on Psalm 91 with the coronavirus. It's titled, Why No Virus Can Come Near You. Are you kidding me? And using Psalm 91, no arrows by day, nothing can assault you, says the Psalm. Is that a perfect promise that the Christian will never get sick or catch a virus? No, it's absolutely not. It was a particular context by a particular author in a particular covenant. And furthermore, what do we see throughout the Bible? Good people get sick. Christians get ill. Paul had a thorn. Timothy dealt with stomach issues. Were they not understanding Psalm 91 rightly? No. What are the promises that Jesus gave us for the Christian life? Trials, tribulations, temptation. Paul said to Timothy, anybody who lives godly will be persecuted. There's no protection that's a Bible verse that you say or speak or understand, and nothing bad is going to happen to you. Ask Job. God could be using these things to grow you, to prepare you for further ministry, and these hacks who make these ridiculous, outrageous claims, frankly, This is like encouraging people to risky bad behavior. Martin Luther had a better handle on it. Oh, that hurt again. I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it. There it is. You trust God, you act wisely. You don't let go, let God. You do wise things. You use wipees, for instance. You use the germ killer. You maybe don't hurt people at Costco in the process of trying to get it, but never, and by the way, Uh, maybe this virus thing is worse than I thought. Costco has stopped samples. Okay, that is whoever thought something so dire could possibly happen. We act wisely. You don't walk down the street and when you see somebody going, you don't run into the front of their face when they go, CHOO! Avoid it. Wear a mask if you'd like to. You do what you think that you need to do, knowing full well that if God is going to give you coronavirus, you're going to get it. You can lock yourself away in a germ-free room. An idea in general. as a germaphobe, I find rather attractive. Nevertheless, you can be in that room in a sterile setting, and if God wants you to get SARS, swine flu, the bubonic plague, you're going to get it. You don't tempt God. You don't act foolishly. You don't use wrong Bible verses for silly promises that the Bible doesn't actually make, thinking that you're going to be protected because you listen to that dopey sermon on Psalm 91. We act wisely, trusting God, knowing God is sovereign. He's going to protect, or he's going to give it to you, one way or another. Luther went on. I shall avoid places in person where my presence is not needed in order to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. So I want to do things that love my neighbor. So if I'm sick, maybe I want to stay away from people as a way to love my neighbor, not go to work. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me, and I have done what he has expected of me, and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person, but will go freely. I think that that is about as balanced an understanding of the situation as we could possibly have. Are there other things to say? I'll let other commentators talk about that. Is the government behind this? Is this a thing from the Democrats because of Trump? Answer, I don't know. If it is, I gotta tell you, it's really wicked because people are losing money. They're not being able to go to work. Vacations that have been saved up, money will be wasted and spent. People are being hurt. They're not getting hired. If there is some sort of conspiracy behind this, wow! There's a lot of evil people who don't care much about loving their neighbors. We Christians, on the other hand, we will love our neighbors, we will be wise, we will do what we think is biblically best, and we will go about the business of trusting God, even as the world has a complete coronavirus meltdown. The definitive word? Whatever. This is Wretched Radio. Let me take you to Eastern Europe where the stories coming out of the Tomorrow Clubs are much better than my accent. Katya came to the club when she was 14. Her father at the time left their family and her mother was struggling to raise five kids by herself. Katya loved her experience in the Tomorrow Club right away and was overwhelmed with the amount of God's love shown through the leaders. Very soon she brought three of her siblings that later became her helpers. Last year, Katya repented at a local church and was baptized. Now she's a leader in this Tomorrow Club, serving God. And I want to thank the Wretched Radio for your support that made Katya's story possible. May God bless you. That's our dear brother, Max, leading the Tomorrow Clubs in Eastern Europe. $30 a month, 30 disciples, your own Tomorrow Club in a small, poor, Eastern European village, You can become a Tomorrow Club sponsor, tomorrowclubs.org slash wretched, tomorrowclubs.org slash wretched. What are you doing April 8th? I know you're getting as many copies of The Man Who Split Time, 22 Proofs Jesus Is God. You are going out to the streets to a university campus, joining many wretches to give away a gospel booklet that demonstrates Jesus is God, co-authored with this man, Phil Johnson. Say hi, Phil Johnson. Hi, Phil Johnson. He's better in writing. Get your copies of The Man Who Split Time and give it away to as many people as you can on April 8th. So join us for the Easter Invasion, April the 8th. To get your copies of Wretched's newest evangelical resource today, go to wretched.org. www.wretched.org slash time and join your fellow wretches April the 8th at any public university or college campus for the Easter invasion. Let's invade these campuses and share the gospel by handing out the man who split time 22 proofs Jesus is God. Get your copies today at www.wretched.org slash time www.wretched.org slash time First, the good news from the Philippines. That's excellent news, but there is some bad news. The Bible study leader is not able to provide Bibles for them because he himself do not have any support for the ministry. He's having a hard time even to find his transportation going to the Bible study. That's not good at all, but it gets worse, I'm afraid. Filipinos cannot afford to buy a Bible because of poverty and they are very much engrossed trying to make a living for their family. So no more funds to buy a Bible. You and I can change that for just $5 per Bible with Bible League International. We can bless our brothers and sisters in the Philippines. How many Bibles could you send? Retchit.org slash Bible. Retchit.org slash Bible. Important Dates in Christian History 1273 Thomas Aquinas completes work on Summa Theologica, the theological masterpiece of the Middle Ages. Aquinas synthesized faith and reason, incorporating Aristotelian philosophy into his work, and provided a theological framework for Catholic doctrine. This is Wretched Radio with Tom Friel. So far, so good. I suspect that'll be the end of that. This is Wretched Radio. Gentlemen, I have laid out the definitive Christian response. Whatever. Different Christians gonna make different decisions. Canceling church, going to church, communion, not communion, shaking hands, not shaking hands. I think it's up to individual Christians, churches, pastors to make those decisions for their flock, for their families, and we shouldn't be going to the mattresses on these differences of opinion on how we respond to Coronavirus, against my better judgment, I'm going to ask you, gentlemen, agree or disagree? We definitely don't want to be going to the mattresses because that would mean we're sick. Ah, exactly. Or you could catch something because those mattresses cover your mouth when you cough over there. They're filthy. I could catch coronavirus all the way down here from your coffin. Sorry, I meant to say Luther good, coronavirus bad. So yeah, I'm on board. Bold, bold position. You know, here's a demonstration that if you're going to get sick, you're going to get sick or not. I had the flu. Don't think it was the coronavirus. Had the flu. Don't you always appreciate health so much more when God heals you? I know I do. And I think that's a lesson I should continue to remember so he doesn't have to remind me again. But Mrs. Friel didn't get sick. So for eight and a half days, I was kind of bleh. Varying stages of shakes, trembles, fever, sweating, cold, runny nose for about a day. That got tossed in there too. That was just a little whipped cream thrown on top of my flu sundae. She didn't get sick at all in the house. Now granted, we went through vats of Lysol, but the point is, she didn't get sick. You know why? Because God didn't want her to get sick. If God wanted her to get sick, and by want, I mean he ordains it, God doesn't delight when we get illness. Like, ooh. I'm gonna make sure that they're throwing up with a combination of the shakes, and an upset stomach. I love that combination. I want that to happen. That's not God, but he does ordain it, and he can send illness. The devil can cause illness, it seems, and certainly God can, and it is not a sin for him to do so. If the Lord strikes me with coronavirus, I cannot shake my fist at the heavens and go, how dare you? either permit or cause this. God ordains it. It is good for his children. Never forget that. The theology of sovereignty on one hand, God's goodness on the other hand. And that will keep it balanced for you. What God ordains is always good. Always. No exceptions. And so I see an example in my own home. God wanted me to be sick. God didn't want my wife to be sick. And that is exactly what will go on in your home. God will do what God desires to do for your good, for his glory. He's not gonna redeem something out of it. The event itself is ordained by God for good. It's not just the, what God ordains, what God puts you through, when you are sick, when your head is in the toilet, God is desiring to do something for you in that. The only question is, will we learn whatever it is that he's teaching? Lesson number one, I'm telling you, I've been thanking God more for good health because it feels really good to not be shaking and to not be hacking up a lung. What lesson do we need to learn? That's up to each individual. All right, Tony, I suspect I'm going to pass because Martin Luther gave it an endorsement and we quoted him. So you're probably fine with everything I said. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Even before the Luther quote, I was fine with that. See, I figure we're not ever canceling church. What's going to happen is if you don't want to go, don't go, but it'll still be there. I agree. And look, I wouldn't do it either. Could I understand if a pastor made that decision? Yeah, it's a decision I wouldn't make. Has he suddenly denied the essentials of the faith? Did he deny the divinity of Jesus Christ? Something about the church? No. I would disagree with that. Now, I would like to propose this. I do think this is an opportunity. Remember, the Bible is relevant in all centuries. When Paul encouraged the believers to greet one another with a holy kiss, that was a cultural thing. Unless you're in France, you don't do that anymore. We just shake hands or we do the three back pat Baptist hug type of thing. You know, the boop boop. That's the old Baptist three-pat hug right there. I don't know why Baptist got that claim, but they speak for all evangelicals. One, two, three, release. How's about we just, let's just make the decision, elbow bumps in the future. It's equivalent to a holy kiss. You're elbow bumping warmly, affectionately even. Why don't we, let's just, can we just agree to do that in the future? I'd like to. Bottom line, fear God more than the coronavirus. Don't be afraid of man. Don't be afraid of an illness that can make you sick or even kill you. Fear God who can take your life and send you to hell. Fear God. This is an opportunity for all of our theologies to be in balance, to be working them out rightly. We have a chance to model that for the world right now. I think this is an opportunity for us to share the gospel together. When people are scared about this stuff, you're looking for a springboard, how's about this? Are you afraid of the coronavirus? If you would get sick and die, what would that implication be for you? Where would you go? The coronavirus could be used right now as an opportunity. Remember Jesus' words. You and I cannot fully appreciate this. These words are so powerful. If I tried to demonstrate how shocking Jesus' words were in response to a tragedy, during a national tragedy, people would be sorely offended by it. So right now, without a national tragedy, at the moment at any rate, nobody has been shot down in a mass shooting. There hasn't been some sort of a catastrophe. Imagine there was. Imagine there's some sort of national event that took the lives of people. The reporter approaches Jesus and says, what's your take? And Jesus responds by saying, I tell you the truth, unless you repent, you'll perish too. Whoa, whoa, that is a slam of a remark. That is a shocking response to a tragedy. Get your priorities straight. Now was Jesus being cold and insensitive? No, there's a time for that. He wept at the funeral of Lazarus, but he also was willing to say, look, let this get your attention here. Could this be, I'm just, is this an option? That the coronavirus scare, whatever, how accurate it is or not, God is using to save people? Of course it's a possibility. I'm not a prophet, I can't say it, but it most certainly is. That is why God either causes or permits bad things to happen to pagan people. There's one of two reasons. He is either now pouring out his wrath, God has the option of pouring out his wrath on an unrepentant sinner on this planet. He does not need to wait until he takes his life and casts that person into hell. He doesn't need to wait, he can do it right now. And sometimes he does. Number two, God is using that thing, sending that thing, causing or permitting that thing to shake people out of their complacency. Hey, start thinking about eternal things. Stop looking at all of your earthly activities as if they're the end all be all. Get your spiritual house in order. I'm calling you to repent it. You're scared of that? Wait until you stand before me and have to give an account for every thought, word, and deed. Let me get your attention in this. This is an opportunity for us to Share the good news if you're scared Because of coronavirus death terrifies you I can help you understand why there's a reason for this And we can explain it. We're working on Road Trip to Truth right now. I can't even tell you. Each one of the episodes, we are now done. We're formally done with seven of them. A little bit later today, I'm going to be working on number eight with Zach. Something struck me in episode seven, I think. The kids on the campus, John Fabaros was talking to them and asking them, is it ever wrong to poke your mother in the eye with a stick? And the young lady went, well, I wouldn't do it. And John said, I think I would, am I wrong? Well, you, is it all right for me to poke your mother in the eye with a stick? Would you say that's wrong? Well, you see, that's not something that I would, that wouldn't be the way, and just a complete, is it okay somewhere in the world to beat up a kid with a club? Well, I don't think you should, but this country thinks that you should. Is that okay? And she dropped the F-bomb. She was so confused. The world is confused. Their feet are dangling in midair, wrestling. We're being asked to be insane. There is no absolute truth. We say absolutely, a self-refuting statement. but we have to live and act like there is. And the world is confused, lost, don't know what they're doing, don't know how to make decisions, and don't know what's gonna happen to them when they die. Maybe, just maybe, this is an opportunity for us in this season of fear to use that fear to lead them to safety. This is Wretched Radio. Attributes of God Psalm 115 verse 3 says that God does all that He pleases. God is sovereign over His whole creation. He has the right and the power to govern all things according to His will. Nothing occurs in your life that God, in His sovereignty, has not allowed. He is working all things for His glory and the good of those who love Him. This is Wretched Radio with Todd Friel. We'll put a finger on your lack of assurance button. Push it to help you understand that maybe your confusion has come from a particular place. You can clear up that confusion and walk in assurance. Do you have wobbly knees? Maybe, just maybe. This puts a finger on it. The article was about which comes first, repentance or faith. So many people, they have wrangled with this subject a long time. For instance, you've got your WGT Shed insisted faith must precede repentance. Then you've got Louis Burkoff who appears to have taken the reverse position. Then you've got somebody like John Murray who said, well, quote, an unnecessary question and the insistence that one is prior to the other is futile. There's no priority. The faith that is unto salvation is a penitent faith, and the repentance that is unto life is a believing repentance. Saving faith is permeated with repentance, and repentance is permeated with saving faith. And so you've heard before that repentance and faith, two sides of the same coin, the two wings that must fly us to the Savior. You can't really say one comes before the other. It really is an in-house theological dispute. It's interesting. to a degree. Nobody should be called a heretic for whatever position they happen to land on. But that was not the point of this that I thought was the most interesting or potentially helpful for you. Some people lack assurance in their Christian walk because they maybe didn't feel as bad as they should. when they got saved. They felt a little bad, but not like broken bad. Or that sense of repentance in a contrite heart, a broken spirit, it developed progressively. And so from this article from Sinclair Ferguson, I thought this was perhaps of help to you. Entwined within any theology of conversion, lies a psychology of conversion. Don't be scared by that word. So whenever we talk about the subject of conversion, you've got the theological issue, but now we've got to apply it to human beings who have brains that are somewhat unpredictable and aren't as quickly defined on a piece of paper. He writes, in any particular individual, at the level of consciousness, a sense of either repentance or trust may predominate You, when you heard the preaching of the gospel for the 912th time or for the first time, you heard and responded perhaps based on the way that gospel was presented, or based on where you were at in life, or based on what you had recently done. He writes, what is unified theologically may be diverse psychologically. So here's what he's saying here. We can put a really fine point on the theology of conversion, but it gets really sloppy when we try to apply that to the human brain. Thus, an individual deeply convicted of the guilt and bondage of sin may experience turning from it, repentance, as the dominant note in his or her conversion. Okay, so you've heard these stories. I was a heroin addict and I was in sex trafficking and making pornography and I heard the gospel and I got saved. That individual maybe had a really strong emphasis on repentance because of the lifestyle that he or she was leading. Others, writes Ferguson, whose experience of conviction deepens after their conversion, may have a dominant sense of the wonder of Christ's love, with less agony of soul at the psychological level. It could be based on how they are living, where they are at. For instance, now this, I'm not getting psychological here per se, but recognizing that different people are at different places in life, different walks, different experiences, different cognitive abilities, different emotional levels. Somebody maybe is, they've gone through life and they had a terrible father. They had a dad who was just never kind, never spoke, was mean. And they feared father figures. Suddenly they hear that the father so loves the world he gave his only begotten son and that God is a loving, tender-hearted God who died while we were yet sinning. And they are overwhelmed by that. They're just staggered at the love of God. And there's a little contrition in there. That's what he's going after here. And so we need to be careful that based on your experience, you are not questioning your salvation because there was one that predominated more than the other. That's what he's saying. He writes, here the individual is more conscious of trusting in Christ than of repentance from sin. But in true conversion, neither can exist without the other. So if it really were just one and not the other, you really need to examine yourself. But if one was just outweighing the other on the scale, don't throw yourself out of the kingdom. That's what he's getting at here. Because you maybe didn't feel like it was a 50-50, it was more one than the other, and so therefore I didn't express that as much, therefore I'm not a Christian. Ferguson is saying be careful of that. Now, having said that, he's also saying if you only experienced an overwhelming love of God and there was no contrition, uh-oh, that could be a problem. Now, here's where it tends to get a little bit dicey. You maybe don't remember it clearly, and now you see yourself perhaps progressing in sanctification, but you wonder, well, I didn't cry those buckets of tears. So I think you need to carefully take a look at, has there been increasing repentance in your life? Even if it didn't dominate the stage at your conversion, don't think that you weren't saved, would be the word from Sinclair Ferguson. He writes, the psychological accompaniments of conversion thus vary, sometimes depending on the dominant gospel emphasis that is set before the sinner. In other words the sermon that was about the exceeding sinfulness of sin versus the greatness of grace. So maybe you heard a particular presentation and it just God used that to just move you and to call out to him. but maybe it was weighted with more about sin or the other was weighted more about grace and the goodness of God and the love of God and so you responded to that. Don't think that that means you're disqualified because you did not exhibit the other as much as the one. Having said that, writes Ferguson, in no case, however, can real conversion take place apart from the presence of both repentance and faith, and therefore both joy and sorrow. A conversion that lacks all sorrow for sin, that receives the word only with joy, will be Temporary, and so too, by the way, is the faith that is nothing but turning from works. 2 Peter, chapter two, if I'm not mistaken, Rexella. Chapter two is all about the one who wants to turn from sin. I don't want this sin anymore, but they don't have faith in the Lord. They're not trusting. It is a faithless repentance, and their latter end is worse than the first. Now, maybe some of this cleared up your status. Be careful how you weigh this and do this. And ultimately, here is the point of all of this. If you are perpetually getting yourself into a twist over where you are at, what is the status of your salvation today? Instead of looking back and trying to figure it out, take a look at today. That's the place where I would focus more. It doesn't mean that you should not be able to go back and sort through these things. But especially perhaps if you're a new convert, it might take some years for you to get a perspective on it. And that's okay, because it is important that we can look back and see a time I went from darkness to light. You should be able to do that, maybe not the nanosecond, but the season where things started clicking and changing for you. And maybe this explains why you didn't have one of those bang moments. It's because there was an emphasis on one or the other because of the history of your life or the type of preaching that you were receiving, the psychology of where you were at, to use Ferguson's words. Don't spend all of your time looking for that moment. Let time reveal that. Take a look at today. So here's the question. The question is not, was I saved back in 1984 on this particular date at this particular event? And trying to figure out and sort through the emotions, ask yourself the question, am I saved today? Is Jesus precious to me now? Do I hate sin as I sit here? Do I love my Savior? And if you do, that is the better test. Are you in Christ today? And then let sort through some of the emotions, your experiences, feelings, you're gonna become more knowledgeable in the Bible, your theological understanding is gonna grow, and you will be able to look back and figure out perhaps better, aha, that was the season, that was the time right there, when God saved me, Sinclair Ferguson, hopefully helping you to grow in assurance, because God doesn't want you to be wobbly-kneed. So here's the question. Not so much, when were you saved? Are you saved today? This is Wretched Radio. Do ultrasounds really save the lives of babies? Yeah. One ultrasound, one saved baby. Would you please consider supporting the Ministry of Preborn? Just $28 will provide a free ultrasound to a woman who is considering abortion. They are saving lives every day. 80% of the time a woman sees an ultrasound, she decides to choose life. How many ultrasounds could you provide for just $28? Kindly visit preborn.org slash wretched, preborn.org slash wretched, provide ultrasounds and save the lives of babies. Thanks for being here and listening to Wretched Radio today. And thank you for sharing your wretched stories with us. We truly do love hearing from you. Idea at wretched.org is a great place to share your story. Idea at wretched.org. Or if you have a question, comment, conundrum, or snark that you'd like to voice, beep talk, 1-877-282-BEEP. If I may, let me share an email. I would just like to say thank you. God has used you in completely clearing up all the confusion I had about God and the gospel. Your program has so clearly revealed who God is, why Jesus' sacrifice is so huge, pure logic, and easily understandable facts on God's existence. Before, I was too afraid to witness since I struggled to have clear understanding and facts on these topics. Now, I'm more than thrilled to share this good news. Would you partner with us to make more stories like this possible? Details of becoming a gospel partner at wretched.org slash donate. Wretched, amazing grace, amazing gospel. Imagine. It's Sunday morning. The alarm clock rings. Brring! Sorry, we got a budget. We don't have much for sound effects here. Brring! The alarm bell goes off. You jump out of bed, excited to get ready for a day at church. You put your little gaggle into the minivan. You arrive at church. You greet everybody happily. You sit down, but wait! There's no pastor. That is what it is like for thousands and thousands of Christians in thousands of churches. They have buildings, they have pulpits, and no shepherds to fill them. We can change that by supporting the Master's Academy International mini-seminaries around the globe. Visit www.recha.org pastor, pick your favorite country, and adopt a seminary, and let's fill pulpits together. Important dates in Christian history. 1456. Johann Gutenberg produces the first printed Bible, and his press becomes a means for dissemination of new ideas and catalyzing changes in politics and theology. Without the printing press, the Reformation may have looked very different. This is Wretched Radio with Todd Friel. Phone calls! Taking your phone calls! 1-877-282-BEEP But if you call 1-877-282-BEEP, please leave a message. Keep it pithy so that Joey can nap. We do not want a crabby Joey. Ixnay on the airing sway. Otherwise, pretty much whatever you want to leave at 1-877-282-BEEP. Appreciate your phone calls with questions, comments, conundrums, or snarks. And first, Peter, it says, have ready defense for what you believe. But it also says, do so with gentleness and respect. Is there any reason to not be gentle or respectful? Because there are prophets who use satire and, you know, Elijah with, was your God sitting on the toilet? Is he on vacation? So I was wondering, what specifically is the excuse you can use to not be gentle or respectful in some cases? It's just the whole of scripture. Let the Bible interpret the Bible. Who is the single best prophet at always hitting the mark rightly with tone, attitude, motivation, and theological acumen? Jesus. He's our example. Now here's what people tend to do. They don't read all of Jesus' interactions with people when he corrected them. They maybe read some of them and then they're off to the races. For instance, you know Jesus, he was gentle. He just put children on his lap and he was kind and soft and tender. Yes, that's true. Some people, they'll just use that and go, therefore, never speak strongly. Never rebuke. Okay, there's a big problem with that because Paul tells Timothy that we're supposed to do what? Rebuke, exhort, correct, strongly sometimes. And we do see Jesus doing that. We see Jesus going, just full-on attacking the Pharisees and their horrible theology. Telling the Pharisees, you're whitewashed tombs, you make people twice the sons of hell that you are. These people are, they're dogs. Paul was so severe with the Judaizers, called them dogs. If you're gonna, okay, you wanna do circumcision? I got an idea. You wanna promote that saying you gotta get circumcised to go to heaven? Why don't you just go all the way with that knife and castrate yourself? Whoa, what in the world? Now here's the problem. Some people just take those. and they use that as license to just be aggressive all the time. Cut no quarter and just go right at somebody as if this is you're staving off the winning touchdown right now and you're gonna throw a what do they call it a spear tackle you know when you know what is what do they call it when they dive at you with the helmet they hit you with the helmet. Spearing. Spearing. I know what... I was just testing you, Joey. I... Sure. I know these sports lingo. He said with a mock deep voice to... Not be mocked. Throw off all attention. They just use those anecdotes of Jesus to be nasty. All right, first of all, Jesus was never nasty. We see Jesus in different situations, speaking differently to different people. Consider his engagement, for instance, with Nicodemus. He was pretty corrective, wasn't he? Now you say you're a rabbi and you don't know this? Now, how did he say that? What was the tone? And the answer, well, I don't know for sure. How did he speak to the woman at the well? I don't know, but we see varying shades of his tone and whether he's aggressive or not, or not gentle. Okay, first of all, being gentle doesn't mean that you always sound like a theological marshmallow. that you are just a squish bomb and everything you say um you know uh i sure would it would just be such a wonderful you're a wonderful person but it would just be even more wonderful or if you know if you could just maybe not teach that jesus set aside his divinity and was just a man on earth if you know because overall you do a lot of really good stuff but maybe just think just something to think about No, that's not what gentleness is. It doesn't mean that you can, gentleness is having strength under control. Being meek is having strength, but using it rightly, not misapplying it in unnecessary situations, not blowing your stack, not going at somebody overly aggressively. Does that mean, however, we can never be aggressive? No, it doesn't mean that because Jesus sometimes was very aggressive. He did indeed tip over tables. It's not the only thing he did. So we see in Jesus the perfect balance of all of this. So we need to use some discernment wisdom. Who am I talking to? What are we talking about here? What's this person's history? Where am I at in the conversation with this person? How urgent or dire is this? How much do I know about this particular subject? How aggressive is this person in propagating false teaching? Or is this person just needing some education? We've got to think these things through. I mean, sometimes you're going to meet an Apollos who doesn't understand some things right, and you don't yell at him. Oh, man, you're teaching that about baptism? Knucklehead. I can say that because, you know, Elijah, he mocked the prophets of Baal. No, that's, it's somebody who needs some education. So you gently and lovingly teach them the correct theology. Now, let's say they go, no, I don't care. I'm gonna stick with my false teaching. Okay, now, hey, wait a second. Now, we got a problem here. You've understood this, and now I'm gonna explain to you rather clearly, if you maintain that position, you're outside of Christian orthodoxy. You would be rightly deemed a heretic, which means you're going to hell. We need to talk about this. Um, nope, not interested. Listen, I cannot be more urgent about this than I am right now, and I am willing to warn others about you, and we are willing to practice church discipline on you. Come to your senses, man. Okay, it depends on where you're at with these things. So we see in Jesus all of these different ways of being gentle, respectful, aggressive, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes using strong language. We need to use our wisdom to apply it rightly. Now, here's the key in all of this. Please note, in every interaction that you see with Jesus Christ, what you do not see, What do we never hear about Jesus from those he confronted? Consider this discourse in John, it's what, six through 11. We kind of go in and out of some different scenes, but it's a rather lengthy discourse of Jesus confronting false teachers in public. So this is both teachers and Jews, just your common Jews on the street. And Jesus says things to them like, you know, you're like your father, the devil. It's been a murderer from the beginning. He's the father of lies. And you're just like him. Whoa. And false teachers, you know what they do? They steal, they kill, they destroy. You're the fault. That's you. Whoa. Notice what they do in response. They want to stone him. For what reason? It never says because he was a jerk. It never says because he was just mean. It never says because he didn't deliver it in a way that indicated that he just thought that they were stupid people and he was just smarter than them. Never, never, never. They wanted to kill him because he did confront them publicly, exposing them, and that little old blasphemy thing by forgiving sins, by calling himself Yahweh over and over and over again. They wanted to kill him for those things, but not because he was nasty. Jesus was never nasty. Nobody ever heard him talk, even in that lengthy, consider that lengthy. heartache from Jesus in Matthew. We're going into Passion Week, and he's in Jerusalem. It's around chapter 20, and it's 20, 21, 22, 23, this lengthy Jerusalem, Jerusalem, this heartbreak preaching. And he talks about these people who kill the prophets. And he's mourning, and he's weeping, and he's saying hard things. Nobody ever went, oh he is such a mean man. The discourse that we see, the exchange in John. We never see people going, oh that dude is not gentle. He's not respectful. Never, never, never. All that to say, as you and I go about the business of engaging people, and I'm telling you, in this era, we are just needing it more than ever, for whatever it's worth, because it's lengthier than what we can do at this moment. In the book, Judge Knott wrote several chapters on this. the rules of discernment, the where and the when and the why and the what need to be considered. So you have an arsenal of a very wide range. You can be sweet and you can be sugary. That's fine. You can be stern. You can be severe. You can rebuke sharply. You can even use strong labels, nomenclature to identify. You are somebody who is making you you are a son of hell but we must be wise in how we choose which response we are going to choose and overarching overriding all of this is our motivation is not to win an argument not to be smarter not to knock somebody down not to even just get somebody to stop sinning or teaching falsely but because we want somebody to be saved We want somebody to know the truth. We want the truth to be defended. We want God's word to be honored. That is our motivation. And if people listen to our response, whatever one of the arrows that we choose in our quiver of responses, and if they think that we're being ugly and hateful, we're doing it wrong. Love must motivate the delivery of every arrow in our arsenal. And until tomorrow, go serve your king.