Well, warm greetings to all of you on this wonderful night. I'm glad to be back with you tonight. I hope you're glad to have me back with you tonight. My wife was able to come with me. I'm thankful for that. She's nearly, I would say, 99% of the time able to come with me. We just celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary last week. Really and truly, I came to know Christ just six months before I married my wife, and I was saved and entrenched in the things of the mid-70s, and she had never heard the gospel. So, but I got saved halfway through my senior year of high school. It was really a crisis conversion. It was a real darkness to light kind of thing. My wife made a profession the same night I did, but she wasn't actually genuinely saved until five years into our marriage. And so I was in an unequal yoke for five years. And I'm gonna be talking a little bit about grace tonight, but really from a human standpoint, and I think many people would say this, if it weren't for the grace of God and the work of Christ, humanly speaking, our marriage would never have lasted. And it puts me in mind to tell you a little bit of a story. There was a couple, it was old farmer and his wife that lived out in Tornado Alley. And they went to bed one night and a huge tornado came through. and they could hear it, but they just stayed, you know, securely in their master bedroom. And it got so bad that this tornado literally tore the roof off their house and was sucking the house up into the funnel. And the wife, of course, was, you know, just getting, excited and out of her head, and the husband said to her, now, honey, God's in control. Everything's going to be all right. Don't worry about it. What are you so upset about? She goes, I'm just not upset about the tornado. She said, this is the first time we've been out together in 20 years. I've done a little bit better than that, but not much. Well, let's have a word of prayer and we'll leap back in. Our wonderful, gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you that you receive sinful men. We thank you that according to the glories of your work of salvation, you save from the gutter most to the uttermost, that you are powerful to save, that you shape lives by your transforming gospel. And all of those who have been the recipients of Jesus' love and His cleansing and His work of salvation, whether we were born in a Christian home or whether we lived in the world and came to Christ later, all of us, Lord, there's no reason why, apart from Your love and grace, we should have been saved. So we thank You for that. I pray for your blessing and your help, and I pray that the people here would receive with meekness the implanted word, which the book of James tells us is able to effectually save our souls. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Several years ago, talking about my wife and marriage, we were at a restaurant and we, by chance, really by providence, ran into a couple that knew my brother Jay real well. Most of you know Jay because the son of that couple was on the same wrestling team with Jay's boy, Jake. And the wife just happened to graduate a year, actually would have been a year between me and Dale. So when we saw them come in, I said, hey, and I said, hey, why don't you guys join us? And I was, of course, looking for an opportunity to, to minister to them. I can put that there probably. And to just kind of feel them out. And so as we began talking, they began telling me that they were attending a big mega church. And they were what you would have called seekers. They were seeking spiritual things. And they began to tell me about this church. And so I put a question to them that I've put to a number of people. I said, if you, could sum up in a sentence or a paragraph at the most, the single most essential message you think that church is trying to communicate, what would it be? Now, some people really struggle with it. Oh, he answered it immediately. He said, oh, the thing me and my wife love about this church is we feel just as comfortable there as if we were at a rock concert. Now what he was telling me and what he was making a statement about was their feel for the ambience of the church and the primary message communicated by not just the preaching, but the primary message being communicated by the entire prevailing atmosphere of the church. Now, my point in that is not a diatribe about the rightness or wrongness of music. If he had responded this way, oh, we feel just as comfortable there as we do at a Shakespeare play, the problem would have been exactly the same, folks. It really would have been. And that is this, that there is a certain kind of message that is communicated by the culture the prevailing atmosphere, what's in the air, the mood of the church. And so I ask, what is lost when what is communicated is wrong? When the prevailing atmosphere of the church is not really robustly biblical? Well, if you read this verse, it's in First Corinthians 14, where there was all kinds of issues in the church at Corinth and they were very confused about giftedness of people and of course the role of women in ministry and the prominence of the place of clear prophetical, propositional truth through the ministry of the word. And Paul is actually correcting them when, because something happened in Corinth that the prevailing atmosphere went bad. He said this, if an unbeliever or outside enters when things are right, He is convicted by all. He is called to account by all. The secrets of his heart are disclosed. And so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you. Now that's quite a list of things. that can fall upon and impress the mind. This word here for the outsider, we get our word ignoramus from it. They're unlearned. the impression that can be made on the mind of an unbeliever, somebody who doesn't know the things of God. When the prevailing atmosphere is right, it's quite powerful. You just meditate on all that is in that verse. So let me put a question to all of you. In a single word, This is rhetorical, I'll answer it. In a single word, what should the prevailing atmosphere of a church communicate in a single word? Well, you might say, well, the thing that most needs to be communicated is just God. Well, that is too generic because you can go into a Catholic or a liberal church and they're gonna talk about God. Well, you might say love, the love of God. Well, that is far too limiting because that's not the only aspect of God's character that is set forth in Scripture as vitally important. You might say holiness. But that really does not tell us how that kind of perfection can be attained. All of those are important, right? And all of those should be features being brought out in different dimensions of the church. But I'm asking, what is the one essential irreducible feature that must permeate the entirety of the church life atmosphere? And that answer is this, grace. And for you kids out there that are looking for a key word, there it is, grace. But you don't just have to remember the key word. I want you to get the definition I'm going to give for it later. So I'm going to basically preach on this idea of grace. all other world religions say you earn favor by God, by good work, by conformity to a set of laws, and by doing that you earn favor with God. So grace is the single greatest distinguishing element in the Christian belief system that sets it apart from all other religions. And in terms of obtaining salvation, in terms of forgiveness of our sins, assurance that things are right between us and God, that we won't need to be condemned, our justification, our sanctification, it is the grace of God in all of that that is prominent. So my title for the lecture today, the message today, tonight is Cultivating A culture of grace in the church. Have you ever tried to cultivate something in your garden? Takes a lot of work, right? What's the great threat which makes gardening... It's the next thing to going to Hades, working in a garden. What is the one thing that you hate about gardening, in a word? Weeds. If you don't think people hate to weed, you assign a group of teenagers to weed at a Saturday workday and watch what happens. But you have to get out the weeds, okay? So the goal of my message tonight is to unite the ideas of discipleship and evangelism under the rubric of grace. Several years ago, my father-in-law gave me a six-volume set written by the old Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill, on the Second World War. Six volumes. There's a section in there where he explains all the dynamics, racially, culturally, that formed the Hitler that we all read about. But as you read about Hitler, what you understand is somehow by that demonic cadence and his influence, he transformed and mobilized the entirety of the German national consciousness into a war machine, the entire nation. Well, our aim, Joel, Brother Jeremy, leaders of this church. Our goal is to instill in the entire consciousness of the church an awareness that the grace of God is the preeminent feature of the gospel. Grace is the preeminent feature of the gospel. Well, let me go a little bit deeper than I did this morning on the question of why so many churches are in decline. And more importantly than assessing churches solely by numerics, because folks, a big church, a church with a thousand people automatically means it's got God's blessing on it, right? Say it, answer me yes or no. A thousand people means God's blessing must be on that church. What is the measure of whether we're seeing God's blessing on a church, whether we have 25 or 25,000? What's the measure? Is it, is it scriptural? Is it conforming to what the Bible and the ethic of the gospel teaches? So beyond judging churches that are in decline based on numerics, knowing that some big churches are actually in deep decline, why are churches failing to be thoroughly biblical? Well, the answer is a failure to create in the prevailing culture of the church grace as the most essential feature. Now, this is the only slide that is a slide of review from this morning. And I talked about what I saw as the distinguishing mark of a healthy church. In other words, a healthy church is going to have a lot of features to it. It's going to have unity. It's going to have fellowship. It's going to have doctrinal soundness. It's going to be evangelistically mobilized. But I'm saying the distinguishing mark of a healthy church is, quote, the creation of a thoroughly gospel-central focus which permeates the thinking of the entire church so that the prevailing atmosphere in the church is a gospel-central culture, okay? I cannot help but digress from my notes here, even if we go just a little longer than I would like to go tonight. And that is, in the 20 or so churches that I have visited, I have paid very close attention to what people are telling them is the answer to their church in decline. Or, you know, a lot of churches, folks, the demographic of the church, 80 to 85% of the people are 60 years old. And they have maybe a 20-year-old, but the demographic is very old. And sometimes that's felt. You rise up before the hoary head and show respect. This is one of the huge problems with the younger generation is to just disenfranchise the older. I mean, if you get a pastor in here and his mood is, you know, you older people step out of the way and let us show you how it's done. Send that guy packing. Really? Okay. That's not at all what you want, but what I have found is Matter of fact, I went to a church where they had another guy in to do an assessment the way I do. I told my wife, I said, I'm going to tell you exactly what he's going to tell them. He did a marvelous job in practical areas. I said, I'm going to tell you exactly what he's going to tell them is the answer to their problem. They need to pray more, they need to disciple more, and they need to evangelize more. He got done, and I read the report. A lack of prayer, a lack of discipleship, a lack of Now folks, are prayer, discipleship, and evangelism critical parts of growing a church? Churches have been hearing that for 75 years and they're in the same condition. I get it that we want people to do that. What I have found is the thriving churches, and this will speak to, this is my sense, right or wrong, is the churches that pay most attention to what's happening within the believers within the body of Christ because that's the church. So the idea is you build up the believers and then the outreach and the fulfillment of their mission is a natural and spontaneous thing that grows out of it, okay? So, if we aim to cultivate a gospel of grace culture, I want us to define, first of all, what we mean by, one, the gospel, and two, what we actually mean by grace. So, what do we mean by the gospel? What is the gospel? By the way, folks, do not presume that people who have been in churches for a long time can answer this question accurately. The minute you start talking about the good news of Jesus, you better be talking about how God, the criteria God uses to determine whether a man is accepted into heaven or not. you're really getting to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And your pastor, I'm sure, will be teaching that. But what do we mean by the gospel? I just define the gospel this way. The gospel is the good news announcement of the impeccable life, that means Jesus was sinless, His substitutionary death and triumphant resurrection of the Lord Jesus in order to save sinners offered freely and indiscriminately to all with the hope they will repent and put their faith in Christ. Now, let me make a proposition, and that proposition is this. Grace is the most distinguishing mark of a biblical culture, beyond any question about that. It is the most distinguishing mark that should characterize the atmosphere of the church. But we must understand grace, right? I have found, you'll forgive me, I've found that many people have a very rudimentary, elementary understanding of grace. Grace is more than God's unmerited, undeserved favor. It is at least that, and that's not a bad definition. But failure to go a little further keeps us from really understanding grace. Grace is more than the acronym, God's riches at Christ's expense. That's a wonderful thing, G-R-A-C-E, at the beginning of each of those words. But it is more than that. Let me give, I'm actually going to give two little historical digressions here. The first one is this. You've heard of the reformers like Zwingli or John Calvin or Martin Luther or some of the Anabaptists or some of the other, you've heard about these men, okay? You've heard about the Puritans and you've heard about what they call particular Baptists. Well, they referred to something that they actually called the doctrines of grace. I'm saying grace is the prominent feature. There was a reason they historically used that wording to sum up their whole view of Christianity and the doctrine of salvation. It was the doctrines of unmerited favor. It was the doctrine of grace. It was the doctrine that God worked supremely to save men when nothing in themselves would ever be inclined to save themselves. So if it was meant left to man to come to God, he never would apart from God initiating it. Let me give you a helpful story that will illustrate what we mean by grace and then I'll give it a concise definition. My brother Jay was attending a church, this was probably a decade ago, And they were a church that practiced the doctrines of grace. And there was a man in there who really began to be a troublemaker. And he was really working against the pastor. And it confused my brother Jay. And my brother Jay called me. He said, Todd, I got a question for you. This was his question. because it came basically from this detractor at the church. And his question was this, is it possible for a person who is elected by God before the foundation of the world not to come to Christ? His question was, can an elect person not end up getting saved? Well, let me just answer that. Unapologetically, absolutely, categorically, no, that is not possible. Jesus said, all that the Father gives me will come unto me. But I told my brother Jay, I said, Jay, I said, to get to the right conclusion, you have to ask the right question. And I said, that really wasn't even the question the man answered. I told him what the guy's question was and he later verified it. And his real question was this, why are some people elect and why are some people not elect? Folks, this is not a message advocating or preaching Calvinism. This is making a point about the doctrines of grace and grace is the most preeminent feature. And so here is the right question, not why are some elect and some are not. Here is the right question, why are anybody elect? Why did God choose any of us before the foundation of the world? And he most certainly chose us before we had any will in the matter. The scripture says we are elect before the foundation of the world. That makes God first chooser, okay? Why is anybody elect? If you can answer that question, you get to the heart of the justice of God and the grace of God. Most people, and if you object to the word elect for some reason, even though it's a biblical word, you might reject to it because you think there are certain things behind it. I'm not going to contest. If you like this question better, why is anyone ever saved? Why does anybody ever come to Christ? The answer to that is the grace of God. And you begin to understand the grace of God when you realize that from a standpoint of God's justice, He had no moral obligation to save any of us. If God had chosen to allow every single soul to perish in condemnation in hell, he would be guilty of no injustice based on his justice. But what did God, what motivated the all-loving heart of God? What's the word? What motivated him? His? His grace! to bestow love on us that in no way we merit in any way whatsoever. To deny that is to deny a fundamental article of the Christian faith. It is the grace of God. Romans 4, 4, and 5. Now to someone who works, wages are not considered a gift but an obligation. However, to someone who does not work but simply believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. Romans 9, 14. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? And that is always the complaint of people over unconditional election is that it's not fair. It's like Spurgeon said. Somebody once asked him, he was struggling, he said, how could God hate Esau? Esau have I hated, Jacob have I loved. That's grace. You know what Spurgeon said? You know what he said to that question? It was a deacon who came to him. I just don't understand. I'm struggling. How could God hate Esau? And in classic form, Spurgeon said, I have no problem understanding how God hated Esau. My problem is how he ever loved Jacob. That's the grace of God. That's the grace of God. So Romans 9.14, so too at this present time, there is a remnant chosen by grace, but if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. Let's not strip grace of all of its glory, okay? So that brings us to grace defined. Now we're going to go a little beyond the key word and we're going to look at grace defined. This is homespun but I think it's a good definition. Grace is the undeserved and unmerited favor of God toward man for which he was in no way obligated to bestow. Grace is the sole basis and the most distinctive feature of God's provision of salvation and it is that same grace that should characterize are every interaction with other people. Grace should be the operative principle in our churches. What makes grace stand out as a prevailing, preeminent feature? It's when the individual people see themselves as the unworthy object of an undeserved favor that for some reason, unbeknownst to us, set its love on worms like us, because that's what we are, apart from operation of the grace of Almighty God. Now, and by the way, folks, have you ever had something happen in your life where somebody really sinned against you and forgiveness was challenging. Do you know that the key that can help a person forgive another person of any sin is when they realize that God has forgiven them far more, infinitely more than they will ever have to forgive another person. In other words, They have sinned against God a zillion times more and greater than anyone, no matter how badly they have sinned against another human. That's the truth of it, because God's an infinite person. Now, most Christians would immediately affirm the need for the gospel of grace to be prevalent in the atmosphere of the church. But I think many people do not recognize the enemies to this. They say, yeah, grace is how we're saved. But I don't know that they can see the culprits that steal the atmosphere of grace from a church. Like I said this morning, likening it to a sick person, they don't see their symptoms. Have you ever watched somebody when they're first diagnosed with cancer, when they hear the C word? It's almost like, no, no, I don't have that. I will not admit that I have that." And as long as they won't admit their condition, why then they won't ever follow the preferred and the prognosis of the doctor because they can't admit it. Well, I just think sometimes we don't see the culprits. This has been part of my life for six years, helping people to understand the culprits to grace. So let me just, 20 years ago, I got my hands, I read every volume I could get my hands on, on the history of the fundamentalist movement of which I was born again into and which I was a part of and which I have great respect for. Fundamentalism is a movement that surfaced in the 1850s. It was a biblical reaction to religious liberalism, anti-supernaturalism, modernism, that began denying the authority of the Bible, the sufficiency of Christ's atonement, it denied the bodily resurrection, so they stood up and they fought against it, okay? And actually, part of the history of fundamentalism that I read, it's a pretty well-known fact that fundamentalism as a movement went through several stages. They refer to the peaceful, non-conformist fundamentalism that was the early fundamentalism. They used the word Irenic, which means peaceful. They also talked about the militant separatism of fundamentalism, when it really got aggressive in separating from false teachers and things like this. And then there was the period of divided fundamentalism because of the emergence of the new evangelicalism, which said they were fundamentals, but they began denying the Bible. They really didn't deny the Bible, but they began talking to other apostates as if they were Christians. And then there was the period they call the independent fundamentalism. That is from 1960 to 1995. Now after reading A ton of stuff, especially about two decades ago, all over the blogosphere, men from every quarter of fundamentalism began saying, we've got some in-house issues we need to deal with. I read a hundred periodicals and stuff from the seminaries that put out periodicals that are fundamentalist by nature, and I really began, this is my term, not anybody else's, it is now a movement under severe self-scrutiny for good reasons. I'll give you a few of them, but that analysis that has gone some distance toward revealing things within the climate of fundamentalist churches that obscure the gospel and grace, but maybe not far enough. So what does the atmosphere of a church look like when grace is not paramount? We might ask, what usurps a gospel-laden atmosphere? Now, I compiled my own list. There's a bunch of lists that people come up with, but I'm not using those, though they're certainly accurate, okay? I am just going to read through these 11 things that I jotted down as my own personal observations after being in the movement. for 44 years of my life now, from the time I was 19 converted now to almost 62 years old. I'm only going to comment on a few of these. So we are, I forgot to put what is the gospel. I forgot to bring the slide up because I got so carried away in my own thoughts. Oh, I'm going backwards. That's the problem. Something's really wrong here. Okay, now the top button is actually advancing it, gentlemen. Okay, here we are. Okay, so we're looking at features of churches that obscure a gospel-rich culture. You tracking with me? Everybody online with what I'm saying? Yes, ma'am. I am sorry, I most certainly will. There is grace defined. Let me go back in my notes. I don't know how. I must have digressed, which I am known for. Okay, grace divine. Grace is the unreserved, unmerited favor of God toward man for which he was in no way obligated to bestow. I did think I went through this. Grace is the sole basis and the most distinctive feature of God's provision of salvation. It is the same grace that should characterize our every interaction with other people. Grace should be the operative principle in our churches. Let me tell you something that you will come to know about a mature Christian who's really growing. They become increasingly less judgmental and they become increasingly gracious because they have tasted that the Lord is gracious. So we're looking now at these features. The first one, again, I'm not going to I'm not going to say much about it except for a couple of them. Here's something that really, I think, distorts grace. Externalism placed over the internalization of biblical truth. Spirituality judged by what you do behaviorally rather than what you are in your position in Christ. And a whole generation of kids, because they were focused on what they wore, what they did, this, that, not on the security they have in Christ, were always doubting their salvation. an external appearance grid that measures spirituality by conformity to external standards. And what I'm going to call hobby horse theology. You know what it's like to get on a hobby horse. This guy's got a burr in his saddle. This guy goes off on the same issue. You can count on it. He's gonna go back to that subject, okay? Well, some of the hobby horse issues in fundamentalism that I'll talk about is like embedded traditionalism. Folks, the Bible teaches that tradition has a place. I have a whole message on bound or loosed when traditions are binding and when they're not. But embedded traditionalism that gets so ingrained that all they care about is the way it used to be in the past is not good. Jesus's ministry makes this very clear. The tradition of elders that basically forsook the word of God. Like for example, and I know your pastor has taken you through this, whatever your preference for a Bible is, when somebody gets more animated about the sound the kind of language God's Word is in rather than the propositional truth statements of God's Word. Folks, you tell me, what has the power to save Elizabethan English or the propositions of gospel truth set forth clearly? Which of those two has the power to save? So if you have the propositional truth statements of the gospel in a conservative modern translation that are easier for some people to understand. That's where the power of God is vested. I have found that that kills grace, in my own opinion. Let me give you another one. I'm gonna talk to the teens here a little bit. I was telling your pastor, there's a book called Christless Christianity. It's written by a guy by the name of Michael Horton. I highly recommend it. It's a phenomenal book. And what he did was one of these Barna groups, I don't know if it was Barna, but they did a research interviewing high school and college age kids that grew up in evangelical churches, but most of them had no interest in the Bible, no interest has gone to church. And what he said that all of, not one of them could define the gospel. And he referred to them as having this, they grew up in churches, they had decent lives, but he described them as having moral therapeutic deism. In other words, they believed in moral living, moral do-goodism. They believed that the Bible was really more therapeutic to give you the best life now. And they believed that God was kind of like the deist. He set everything in motion. He's the one that's responsible, but he's not really imminent. He's not directly involved in our life. This was the generation of kids, and most of them totally apostatized. And if I could give my heart, if you are 20 years and younger, please just raise your hand real high right now. There's not a lot of you, 20 years old and younger. I can hardly see, but there's a few of you. You need to understand. that what you should be being taught is that the Bible is not a law book, a moral code book, that if you will follow its precepts, it will bring blessing into your life. and that your whole life hinges around whether you could do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, add infinitum. It is built around what's been done for you. And rather than thinking the Bible gives you a script for success, if you'll follow its moral codes, the teaching of the Bible is you're a broken, depraved, helpless, sinner, ungodly, unworthy of God's love, But if he sets his love upon you in your grace and you get a hold of that, you will serve God with a gladness of heart. It will not be a, my wife's life verse, this is what brought her to Christ. The verse that says, this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. Why are they burdensome? Because you realize they grow out of the love of God who saved you. This is a vital truth. This is a whole message I should preach some of your time if you'll ever have me back. Here's another one, make sure. Binding conscience in areas that are clearly extra-biblical, a subtle pretense that we have everything together over a transparent honesty about the depth of our struggle, what I would call triumphalism or victorious Christian living, rather than the admission which we all know we're broken we struggle with sin the devil gets the upper hand and you know you know what God brings you know what God does for us to make us be sure the ground of our assurance is not settled on what we do he gives us the gospel of grace over and over again and forgives us again and again and again right? Authoritarianism, one of the critiques, this wasn't one that I went, that fundamentalism loved big name, big personality types where the locus of power was in the individual. God forbid. Decentralize the leadership in your church because that's a biblical model. A legal view of sanctification, you know, growing in holiness, that defines personal holiness as something produced by my obedience to the law. I find acceptance and approval with God based on works, based on my conformity. And if you read the Old Testament, they never fulfilled the purposes that God had for the law. The law was given to reveal their sin. I think we've forgotten that. It was a view that said, I'm justified by faith, but I'm sanctified by my own works. There is also pietism. Let me go back, I skipped that. Pietism, where deep spirituality is largely measured by man's passion and affection for God rather than his love and passion for us. And while I will tell some of the young people who are enamored with John Piper. John Piper's written some good things. His pietism mixed with heavy emotionalism and openness to charismaticism is a toxic mix. For all the good he does, just remember this, don't feel too strong about your passion for God, but feel pretty strong about his passion for you. I know I'm going through stuff really fast here. Also, I think I skipped the first one, but separation gone to seed so that cooperation with other believers is refused based on matters of secondary importance that fall into the area of Christian liberty, what I would call tribalism or separation on steroids. What I believe happened to the fundamentalist movement is it began to withdraw from people for good biblical reasons. where the Bible tells us how to posture ourselves towards false teachers and clearly disobedient brethren. We began forming parties over secondary issues. I mean sharp lines of division. Thankfully, some of that's being changed. And any deviation from our own application of biblical principles leads to unnecessarily isolating ourselves from other genuine believers and from the unsaved around us who need to hear the gospel, what I call a spiritual form of groupthink. Now, you may need to let some of that settle, and you may not agree with that assessment. And that's fine, and I could certainly stand to be refined or corrected. I recognize that. But what is lost or obscured when forces obscure the preeminence of the grace of God in our church. It is the beauty of the gospel. And so Ray Ortlund said this, in too many of our churches, it is the beauty of a gospel culture that is the missing piece of the puzzle. I told you I was going to give you another church history lesson. This is a fascinating one. You'll love it. Years ago there was a book in Scotland written called The Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher. It's not a very well-known book, hard to get copies of it, but it was a book. Marrow is what you need in your bones, right? to really thrive and be healthy. He was talking about the marrow of theology. What does theology really need to make it thrive? And his basic point was the grace of the gospel. And so he wrote this book, which was set up as a dialogue between four characters. The characters were evangelista, who was the pastor, neophytos, who was a new Christian, nomista, based on the Greek word for law, this was the legalist, and then somebody called antinomista, who was an antinomian, that means somebody who thinks you can live any way you want, grace, you know. Free from the law, happy condition, sent all I want, there's easy remission. That's it. Now what the book dealt with was the relationship between the grace of God and the law of God. It was very controversial, was banned in the Church of Scotland, and some of the men who followed it, who I totally agree with, Thomas Boston being one of them, who wrote a book called The Crick in the Lot. The Crick in the Lot, one of the greatest Christian classics you'll ever read. You ought to read it. But for our purposes, I want to look at how the book raised the issue of a culture of grace in the church. And what I'm doing here is I'm just taking direct excerpts, and I'm just going to kind of let them stand on their own with a few comments. So... Oh, now it's going the other way. Okay, I am not really good at this apparently. Okay, here's what he said. He said, at the root of the matter lay the nature of the grace of God in the gospel and how it should be preached. It's more than just unmerited favor. He's gonna talk about this. Thomas Boston shared moving and convicting accounts of how they spent years in ministry subscribing to the correct doctrine of justification. That means that nothing you do has anything to do with you being saved or the ground of your assurance it's in Christ. But at a practical level still functioned as if the law was a covenant of works rather than a rule of life. He said this, there is a kind of orthodoxy. By the way, if you don't know what I mean by orthodoxy, there's no problem. Raise your hand. Raise your hand if you don't know what the word orthodoxy means. Okay, you all know what it refers to, it's a combination, there's a dental word in there, straight doctrine. Doctrine that conforms to the Bible, that's orthodox. Men who are orthodox and evangelical believe everything the Bible says and they believe in conversional preaching because men are lost, okay? And what he said was there's a kind of orthodoxy, so they got the doctrine right. in which systematic theology or the stages of redemptive history are all in place, but lacks the life of the whole, just as arms, legs, torso, head, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth may all be present, while the body as a whole lacks energy and perhaps life itself. The form of godliness is not the same as the power." And he's going to tie that power to the gospel. He goes on to say, Because when you're very legally oriented, law based, do, do, do, do, do. Why? Because it leads to a restriction in the heart of the preacher that matches the restriction he sees in the heart of God. Such a heart may have undergone the process that Alexander White described as sanctification by vinegar. Have you ever met a pickled Christian? Really? Sanctified by vinegar? I have. If so, it tends to be unyielding and sharp-edged. A ministry rooted in conditional grace has that effect. It produces orthodoxy without love for sinners and a conditional and conditioned love for the righteous. And then finally, he said this. He said, what the marrow controversy actually unveiled was the possibility of acknowledging the truth without those truths being animated by a grasp of the grace of God in the gospel. The metallic spirit this inevitably produced would then in turn run through one's preaching and pastoral ministry. You guys ought to read Sinclair Ferguson's book on this, The Whole Christ, in which he unfolds it, and read the Mirror of Modern Theology also. Folks, I guess what I'm saying to you is this, is you want an atmosphere of grace because it produces such a genuine spirit of freedom from the condemning power of the law, as he said. Now, let me give, then, at this point, a fuller sense of a gospel culture when grace is the prominent feature. And we're gonna come to some pretty specific application. Hang with me. A gospel culture is the good news spirit that cultivates an atmosphere of grace prominent in all the preaching and that permeates the mindset of the people. This is in contrast to a legal culture that is rule-driven, restrictive, and binding A culture of grace produces a genuine spirit of freedom from the condemning power of the law. It is the gospel genius or ethic applied to every dimension of the church and the life of the Christian. And why? Because as Galatians says, for freedom. You've been freed and Second Corinthians 317, which I didn't read, you can read that. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord, there is freedom. I was in a church for a long time that was a very good, excellent church doctrinally. I'm just being honest with you. The mindset of many of the people, they were wound up as tight as a drum. They were bound. They were always wondering if they were measuring up spiritually because the standards by which they were being judged instead of recognizing none of us have anything to claim on how we're performing as Christians. Not that the performance is unimportant or that the works are unimportant. The works are a reflection of the grace of God in our life. We must understand this, folks, that what is the difference between what is root and what is fruit. The root is grace. The fruit is the outwork of that in our life. So, at this point, I want to look at this specifically as it relates to discipleship and evangelism. So we're going to look at discipleship within a culture of grace first. Now, let me show you something. This is really cool. Discipleship. You see this book, The Trellis and the Vine. There's a couple images here. So you build a trellis to hold and sustain life that can grow up around it. Well, look at this beautiful trellis. Isn't that glorious? I guarantee I didn't build that. Isn't it wonderful? What's wrong with it? It's barren, okay? Now look at this one. The trellis doesn't really look too impressive, right? But what do you see all around it? Growth and life. Now, what pain an Australian guy did with this book was he said basically that the trellis is the framework of ministry needed to make the vine grow, management, finances, infrastructure, organization, and governance. But he said this, the vine are the individual believers we are attempting to grow and cultivate through discipleship in the local church. In other words, folks, the machinery of ministry can go along. Budget looks great. We've been over budget for three years. We just built a gymnasium. My land, the trellis, looks wonderful. What about the vine? And one of the things Payne talked about, is one of the things I talked about this morning, is when church just becomes an activity. Remember Jesus said, I am the... What did he say? I am the... The vine, you are the... and if the vine exists, if the branch exists outside of the vine, it's going to be burned up and thrown away. If you have life from Christ, you are vitally invested in the church. And may I say, if you're not, If you don't have a thoroughly biblical understanding of the grace of God and the work of the church and your connection to Jesus, you just need to ask God to help you to get there. One of the things he said was, quote, this demand for a culture of discipleship, a culture of discipleship, not the notion of discipleship, not that we have 12 books on foundational discipleship or the navigators or anything like that. Those are good as they actually work building up other people. This demand for a culture of discipleship often feels a world away from the ordinariness of our normal Christian habits and customs. We go to church where we sing a few songs, try to concentrate on the prayers, hear a sermon. We chat to people afterwards and then go home for a normal week of work or study or whatever it is that we do in time to come again until time comes next week. We may even attend a small group, but would someone observing from outside say, look, there is someone who has abandoned his life to Jesus Christ and his mission. And folks, I believe one of the great curses of American materialistic, sidetracked Christianity is that people don't see the average person abandoned, sold out to one prime purpose. And you should be. And I should be. And we all struggle together to be so, right? Now, let me just give a caution here, and that is make sure we think biblically about discipleship. You know how people think about discipleship in American Christianity? It's entrepreneurial, it's pragmatic, it's how to grow a church. In fact, there's been something that's been developed over the last 30 years called the Discipleship Making Movement, DMM, Discipleship Making Movement. I have watched men flock to seminars on discipleship with starry eyed, sitting just waiting. And folks, I've talked to them. It's not that I'm just making a judgment. They go there because they think the guy's going to give me the secret to getting my church out of decline. And if I can learn the strategy that he's teaching why I can get it. And it fundamentally becomes about numbers. It measures success by numbers. There are other criteria far more important than that. Though we're very thankful when the Lord blesses us with numbers. I would say this to you folks. Discipleship is so ingrained in the very Basics of the Great Commission that, of course, we disciple. But discipleship happens every Sunday he preaches. Do you realize that? In other words, he's teaching you how to be disciplined followers of Christ. So don't go in for that discipleship for that reason. What about evangelism within a culture of grace? Listen to these great verses. So evangelism within a culture of grace. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering in my prayer with joy and every prayer for you all in view of your, say the word, in view of your participation in the gospel. That's partly what's lacking. You know, the trained minister you pay, that's his work. That's a very reductionist view of the Christian life. I joy because of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. In the defense and confirmation of the gospel you are all partakers of grace with me. Philippians 1.27 which was the which was the theme verse for the church I pastored, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. That word striving, athlontes, Can anybody guess what English word we get from that? What's it sound like? Striving athlontes. Say it out loud. Athletics. What he's saying is in athletic-like endeavor, you're participating with me in straining for the advancement and furtherance of the gospel. Fueled! because you have been overtaken by the grace of God. It's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing. So when I pastored, I had a cinematographer in our church, and I had a vision for it based on this verse, striving together for the advancement, for the faith of the gospel. So one Sunday, I don't know if Dale remembers this. So if you look at the silhouette there, Dale's in that picture because he was visiting. And this man had a bunch of people hold up a two by four. And he just took a picture of it against the church back. Well, then he artistically put the, I had told him I want the globe behind, I didn't know how he'd do it. And it was our mission statement. People knew our logo, striving together for the faith of the gospel. In fact, I went through a kind of a period where God really opened my eyes to ministry. For the first probably decade, not because I wanted any glory to myself, but I was working to build up a big church. And it hit me one day, Todd, I'll take care of the church. You build up individuals. And so we had on our church webpage, Southwest Community Baptist, striving together for the faith of the gospel, and underneath it, it said, investing in eternity, one life at a time. Can I make a challenge to you? You need a contact. You need a friend. You need an unbeliever. that you can befriend and say, hey, how about lunch sometime? And you don't come on like gangbusters. You wait for an opportunity, maybe an emergency in their life. Or you just say, you know, do you think about God much? You believe in the existence of God? Do you know how many opportunities I've had to really unfold the gospel? Because I simply asked a person, do you believe in the existence of God? And do you know the percentage of people who tell me they don't believe in God? It's very little. So I already have common ground with them. When I was in... Dominantly Catholic area I would go door-to-door although door-to-door is not the best cultural means of outreach today I get that for a variety of reasons called safety all that but the Catholics would really let me talk with them and They would agree with me I would ask them Do you know do you I would quote some verses on it's appointed on a man wants to die after this the judgment Do you believe that God you're gonna stand before God? Oh, absolutely And that verse actually teaches that there's gonna be an evaluation. And I have this question. I said, when you stand before God, and they said, oh yeah, I'm gonna stand before God. I would say this way to them. What criteria do you think God's gonna use to determine whether you're condemned or get into heaven? And what would a Roman Catholic inevitably say to that? Well, have I gone to mass? Have I kept the commandments? Have I committed a mortal sin? It was a wonderful opportunity to explain to them how the law worked, the arguments of Galatians. So the trellis and the vine, I'm going to have to skip. You've got the, well, I will read this. This is very important. The gospel itself demands that we stand with our leaders and preachers in profound unity, teamwork, and solidarity, not because of their personality or gifts, but because of our common partnership in the gospel. of Jesus Christ. There aren't two classes of Christians, the partners and the spectators. We're all in it together. Again, as we thought cautiously about discipleship, so we need to think cautiously about evangelism. And that is simply this, folks. Evangelism is not door-to-door visitation. That can be a means of evangelism. Evangelism is not an itinerant evangelist coming in once a year. That is not evangelism. That's a good thing. I believe in itinerant evangelism. I believe that the evangelist of the New Testament was primarily a church planter missionary, but I see a role for itinerant evangelists. Evangelism is carried out by who? All the little evangelists. So I won't say much more about that. Okay, that brings us then to maybe, I guess I would say, the rubber meeting the road, and that is addressing areas of church culture. And let me, okay, everybody understands culture. It's the values, the convictions that a group of people who are together share with one another. And you tell me in one word what's the one value that you should be cultivating in your own life and in the church, what? Grace. That's what you should be called. So here's where we're at. First of all, addressing areas of church culture, the culture of worship, liturgy, music, Some people call Sunday school the dinosaur now, which I still think there's good use for Sunday school. But let me tell you a little bit just about the culture of worship. Liturgy is not a term we often use because it's associated with Roman Catholicism and Episcopalian, and there's heavy liturgical churches that are so or nay, informalistic, that we would never want that dryness. But all liturgy refers to is the elements you have in a service. You all have a liturgy. You have a prayer, you have a sermon, you have hymns, you have scripture reading, that's all liturgy. But because many evangelical churches were recognizing people just come and go, they're not invested as partners in the gospel, they started realizing that a very well-thought-out liturgy where they would have the common confession of one of the ancient church creeds, they would have a prayer of penitence, they would have a prayer of assurance, they would have Old and New Testament readings. I mean, I attended a church, They were 45 minutes worshiping before preaching. It was wonderful. I loved it. And the churches that are thriving, they have developed a biblically, a biblically mandated liturgy rather than, you know, we're not gonna come any earlier than 11 and we're not gonna leave any later than 12. So whatever you can get in between that one hour, that's what we'll give you. The ancient church wasn't like that. Music. I'll say a little bit more about that, but some years ago there was something called worship wars over music because the worship in the churches was being so radicalized and so irreverent. that we realized we needed a better understanding of how, not, everybody understands lyrics, right? Lyrics are either strong or weak, orthodox or not, fluffy or substantive. We get that. Sunday school, we replaced our Sunday school at a time with something called TFT, Together for Truth. And we actually switched our, it didn't work for us. We tried to switch and we did, worship first, and then Sunday school. It was too anticlimactic, but what our people loved about it, what we did for Sunday school was after the sermon, I would break the sermon down into areas of doctrine, and they would just comment on what they understood. They loved it. So we continued doing TFTs, but we did it, so I would preach like on a Sunday morning, a Sunday night, and the next Sunday, The Sunday school or the Together for Truth was like that. And there's all kinds of variations on it you could do. There is, I've already said, the culture of traditionalism, where you got to deal with issues that served us at one time but are no longer of service. The culture of leadership, which is very significant. There is, I seem to be stuck here, Amy. Maybe you can advance me. The culture of militant separatism, which I've already talked about, and the culture of aesthetics. In other words, plant issues. And by the way, let me compliment you. Your church looks wonderful. When you come in, it's welcoming, the little welcome center. What you've done here to modernize is beautiful. When you go to chairs, I'll know you've really arrived. I'm kidding. Stay with Pews the rest of your born days if you like. There are some convenience to that. But let me go here for a second. What's the elephant in the room? When we start talking about adaptation, so that grace is preeminent. What is the one issue that really becomes a rub and one of potentially full of conflict? Say it, say it out loud. Change. Well, change, because everybody loves change, right? And matter of fact, the faster the better. No. Thank God he doesn't work on music. You mean to tell me you're not going to sing the old traditionals and you're going to bring in some of that contemporary stuff? And the contemporary kids are saying, you mean to tell me you want me to sing that old stodgy, stale stuff that you've been singing since, you know, Moses came out of the womb? Now, folks, there's got to be a balance here. Let me raise some questions about the music and just let it settle on you. Is music inherently meaningful? Not the lyrics, the music, piano, percussion, a bass guitar, an organ, I don't care what it is. Can it actually communicate meaning? We used to ask, is music itself moral or amoral? That's a question we have to answer with a fierce biblical approach. We have to answer the question, does it carry message by itself? Can it sanctify my heart? Can music itself be sensual apart from context? There are some people that say any kind of music is fine. Music has no morality no matter how you put together. What makes it sinful is the context. So if you go into a rock concert where they're, you know, being immodest and deviant and smoking marijuana, then that music's bad. But the music itself doesn't have a central component, and so you can bring it into the church. And if their premise was right, well, then you might be able to do that. On the elements to be scripturally evaluated, approaching specific musical styles, genres, is the hardest to dictate based upon objective biblical revelation. And I don't just guarantee you. I will guarantee you that if I took a survey of all the people in the church and their listening standards, they're far broader than what you do in the church. And in one sense, that's appropriate because, you know, it's just like, is a marching band music okay? Is there anything wrong with it morally? Yes or no? No. But would you bring it into church for worship? I mean, I can just see Pastor Joel. No, okay? So you got that question. And then you have, since scripture does not address musical styles, are all styles a matter of Christian liberty? These are my last few comments in cultivating a culture of grace. There's two things for us to consider as we try to adapt on the musical front without compromise. as we flex where we can without violating core values or essential spiritual principles. And that is this, that when you go back to the dawn of the CCM movement, the Contemporary Christian Music Movement, and I've read pretty vigorously in these areas, their motivation was this. We have to use that kind of music because that's what the kids want. That's what's out in the world, so we've got to give them that. That's their motivator. God forbid. God forbid. That's peddling the gospel like merchandise, that I have a certain clientele that'll buy it if I'll offer that product. No way, okay? But people that are writing what we would have 30 years ago regarded contemporary, in other words, contemporary and they're not old, they're new stuff, are not writing from that motivation. I've heard several artists who are producing lyrically powerful stuff, some of the music I don't like, okay? Their motivation is one, to glorify God, to be doctrinally substantive, to be Christ-centered, and they're powerful stuff. We are attending a church. They have an electric piano, an electric guitar, a bass guitar, and an acoustic guitar. It's not loud. It complements the congregational. You can hear the congregation. I've been in 3,000 member churches where they have a worship team. And even if I don't object to the music, The singing isn't congregational. Everybody's not involved. All you do is hear this, like, performance group. God forbid. But this church we're attending uses a lot, uses some of the hymns you use, progressive, doctrinally substance. So it's not being written for the same motivation. The other thing that we have to examine is this. Is European, like sacred style, classical music, the only music that meets biblical standards? Or can a music orchestrated with a little guitar, light percussion, is it fundamentally contrary to holiness? Is it sensual? I don't believe it is. I believe that the younger generation who want to serve God are not bound, whether they should be or not, in their convictions. And where churches won't adapt where appropriately, where appropriate, they cut themselves off, in my opinion. Now, you got to work it out. You got to work it out, Joel. Jeremy, you got to work it out. Deacons, Pastor Sloot, work it out with them. And may God bless you. But bottom line, cultivate a culture of grace and graciousness. Now, I think I went a little longer today because I forgot to look at my clock when I first got up. So somebody just said amen, so I'm going to take that as divine imprimatur on my time today. I don't want to hold anybody longer. Have I left anybody? confused or needing a clarification that you would like to, I told Pastor Joel if he wanted to follow up with some refinement, he is the pastor. Any questions? I mean, you might be sitting out there dying to say, I think you're off your rocker. And I've got pretty thick skin, so, you know, I'm okay with that. My wife will confirm your suspicion if you think I'm off my rocker. Brother Jeremy.