Has the Church Lost Its Way? With Guest, Dr. Michael Horton

Has the Church in America lost its way? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us with your question at 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673.

You can also post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts, and you can email us your question at questions-at-core-christianity-not-dot-com. Well, believe it or not, today marks the third anniversary of this program, and joining us to celebrate is our founder, theologian, and author, Dr. Michael Horton. Mike, welcome to the program. A metal? Yeah, a metal would be nice, or maybe like a good meal. Yeah, it's not silver, it's not gold. What is the third year? What is it? I don't know.

I think it's platinum and it's ribs. Perfect. There you go. Hey, I'm curious, Mike, can you tell our audience what prompted you to start this radio program in the first place? Oh, well, you know, so I wrote this book, Core Christianity, thinking I wanted to reach people who really are excited about hearing God's word, but, you know, don't necessarily know where to start. And they've heard big terms, you know, the Trinity, and the two natures of Christ, and how we know that the gospel is true. And Jesus rose from the dead. All these kind of basic questions. People, you know, a lot of times ask me those questions.

So I wrote Core Christianity as sort of an introduction to basic Christian doctrine. And then out of that, we just kept talking here at this organization about how we could maybe start another radio program. We had White Horse Inn start another radio program. And Adriel Sanchez happily said yes.

And then Bill, you said yes. And Aaron and his team here have done an amazing job, unbelievable job of actually making a dream into reality. And so we're grateful to a lot of people for being means God has used to bring this to pass. Yeah, I'm glad you said that, Mike, because it's easy, I think, for people, for the audience to listen to the broadcast every day and think, oh, you're just a couple guys in a room talking. But there is a whole team that has really been instrumental in making this program what it is.

And I like that you said, you know, is the realization of a dream, because in the early days, it seemed like this really is a dream. Do you remember when we had someone who is like an expert? I won't mention his name, but people would know his voice, at least. An expert kind of coach us.

And he would just pull his hair out and say, you know, I don't... Good luck, guys. Yeah, yeah. But after a while, we really went, you know, we were in sync, and we began to finish each other's sentences. And it's really wonderful to see how you and Bill have been answering people's questions now for three years. Yeah. It's amazing. We praise God.

Yeah. One of the things that our listeners may not know, Mike, is that you're a theology professor and that Adriel was actually one of your students. So how did he do in your classes?

It's a good question, Bill. And I'm happy if you want to talk about that offline. It's one of the reasons why I wanted Adriel to do this, if he would, because he is a first-rate student. And what I like is when we have the head and the heart together and a passion for reaching people with the good news of Christ and of helping them grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, I have never questioned, had any reason to question Adriel's humility and laser-like focus on serving the Lord's people with the Lord's word. And so that really caught my eye. And his just really gracious, humble manner makes doctrine a little more, shall we say, attractive when people sometimes think that doctrine divides.

Yeah. We appreciate his pastoral heart and it really comes through on this program. Well, let's get to one of the questions that we received from our listeners. And this actually, Mike, is an email question from Anna. And she says this, a family member is really into QAnon and conspiracy theories. I tried to tell her the truth, but she's very combative. So I chose not to continue responding, even though she's mixing a lot of these theories and ideas with scripture and even the identity of Jesus and his mission.

Should I just delete these kind of people from my social media feeds, even though they're family members? Wow. That's quite something, Anna. I know.

I wish I could say that you're in this very unique situation. I haven't heard this before. It's across America right now. You have what I call the Fox Christians and the CNN Christians, the Fox churches and the CNN churches. You know, look, if you have a chess club and they decide they're going to start playing Scrabble, then it's not really a chess club anymore. And if you have a church that gets interested in someone other than Jesus of Nazareth, it's not a church anymore.

You might still have the chess club sweatshirt or the Jesus sweatshirt, but it's not really a church anymore. It's an affinity group. It's an affinity group, people who agree with you. And we get in these silos and listen to the people who spout the same stuff we already believe, and that's on the left and that's on the right. But I'll tell you, you know, when you talk to people who are kind of into these conspiracy theories, Anna, you enter a labyrinth from which you cannot emerge. I feel like I'm talking to a Jehovah's Witness when I talk to friends or family who are into these sorts of conspiracy theories.

And at the end of the day, I think, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this lately. The fear of God drives out the fears that we have, especially of each other right now. And we don't have the fear of God. And so our churches are becoming rallying points for someone or something other than Jesus. And to the extent that happens, it's no longer the Church of Christ, it becomes a club.

Yeah. There's a really helpful exhortation, I think, that Timothy gives in 2 Timothy chapter 2. He says, flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

Like that's what we need to be committed to. And he says, have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies. You know that they breed quarrels and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil.

Correcting his opponents with gentleness, God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth. I mean, I think that sums it up right there. It's not getting all caught up in these controversies, you know, in these quarrels, which it seems like for many believers, I mean, that's the temptation in our churches is, boy, just to get sucked into the social media, the news, as you said, the Fox News Christian, CNN Christians. Defining ourselves against the other half of America.

Yeah. You know, that's the problem with conspiracy thinking is that you define your whole, what you're all about and what you're interested in, not by analyzing facts and saying, okay, well, this makes sense. This doesn't, this has evidence that doesn't have evidence, not weighing things yourself, but basically taking what your source of information says as true, just because it's that source of information over against all the other sources out there. Mike, a lot of fear right now. You think about the conspiracy theories.

I think that's one of the reasons why these things have just caught fire is because people are afraid. And I just want to give you an opportunity to plug, you have a book coming out beginning of the new year on fear. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's called recovering our sanity. How the, how the fear of God drives out the fear of everyone else. And so it goes through the top 10 fears that we have right now in our culture. You know, statistical evidence, these are the things that really are, people are afraid of. And then the second part looks at what the Bible says about fear and particularly the fear of God. And then the last third applies that biblical wisdom to the fears that we're really facing today. And especially the divisions that we have that we're, we're, you know, Anna's raising right here. Yeah.

It sounds like an excellent resource. Looking forward to that, Mike. I'm very excited about that. What's the title again? Recovering our sanity.

You know, it's already, you can go to the Amazon site and it's, you can at least see the picture there and pre-order it if you want, but yeah, it'll be out Lord willing after the first year. Beautiful. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez and theologian Michael Horton. Let's go to one of our calls. This is Melissa from Lee's Summit, Missouri. Melissa, what's your question for Adriel and Mike? Hello? Hey Melissa, what's your question?

Hey there. So I'm wondering, what is Christ's admonishment to us when we have a family member that when you tell them no, or you, you don't want to do something that they will slander you and lie about you until you do? Yeah, really a tough situation. So we're thinking about like an abusive relationship here, it seems, and you're not the only one who has, I mean, we get a lot of calls about this very thing. Now, one of the big questions we oftentimes get is, do I have to forgive this person? What is the relationship supposed to look like?

Am I supposed to just keep on enduring this sort of abuse, them continuing to lie about me? The first thing I would say, Melissa, is that we are called as Christians to forgive those who sin against us. I mean, Jesus makes this very clear throughout the Gospels, I think even in Matthew chapter six, where he teaches his disciples the Lord's prayer there in the Sermon on the Mount. And he talks about forgiveness, right? Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And then he even goes on to say, look, if we don't forgive, there's a huge issue there.

I mean, it's totally contrary to the heart of the Gospel. We who have been forgiven so much have to extend forgiveness from the heart to those who have sinned against us. But forgiveness, Melissa, is different than reconciliation. Reconciliation requires two parties. It means that your family member or your friend in particular, they're going to have to recognize, hey, what I'm doing is hurting this person.

I'm not loving them. I'm breaking God's law. And so in order for there to be reconciliation, I think there has to be repentance. And that's where having a conversation, a very honest conversation about what it is that's going on can be helpful. You are free to say, hey, your actions are hurting me.

And this is wrong. And you need to own up to it. And really, you can forgive, but you can't have reconciliation until the other person is willing to see the wrong and admit it.

And then a step further would be restoration. We're called to forgive. We pursue reconciliation insofar as it's possible, especially within the body of Christ. That's something I think is really unfortunate. Oftentimes, even Christians, we can have this sort of forgive and forget mentality.

Oh, things are what they are. And we'll tell ourselves we've forgiven this other person or we're really just trying to cut them out of our lives. So we forgive. We pursue reconciliation if we're able. And then restoration is saying, look, the relationship is going to be what it always was before.

And sometimes that works. And other times, it's not necessarily a wise thing to restore the relationship. There are lots of cases in abusive relationships where you can say, well, you know what?

I have objectively forgiven them for the sake of Christ because I am called to forgive them. And I'm not actually seeking to restore the relationship. And that's the right thing to do. Sometimes that's the wise, proper, godly thing to do, to say this is not a relationship that should be restored. You think of a physically abusive marriage, for example. And there can be forgiveness. There can even be a sense of repentance and reconciliation.

But that doesn't always mean you're called to be back in that situation. And so you have to exercise wisdom there, Melissa. But let me just encourage you to forgive, obviously, from the forgiveness that you've received from Jesus.

I mean, that's what we focus on. We say, look, Lord, you've been so gracious to me. You've forgiven me. Give me the strength to forgive those who sin against me. And then praying for this other person as well that they would recognize what it is that they're doing so that there could be some repentance. But let me just quickly pray for you, Melissa, in this situation. Gracious Father, we thank you for Melissa. We pray for her and for this family member that she's dealing with. We ask, Lord God, for the peace of your spirit to fill her heart.

God, that you would help her. We know that forgiveness is not an easy thing, Lord. We pray that you would fill her with the grace to forgive, to be forgiving as she meditates on the gospel of your son and how she's been forgiven. And we pray that you would be at work in this family member, Lord, helping them to see how their actions are affecting Melissa, that they would come to repentance to turn to you, Lord, and to honor you and how they live and treat their family members. So be with our sister, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Melissa, thanks so much for your call.

We'll continue to be praying for you. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez and our special guest, Dr. Michael Horton, as we celebrate the third anniversary of the Core Christianity radio program. And actually, the book that started off this show is one that Dr. Horton wrote.

It's called Core Christianity, and we'd like to make that available to you today. Yeah. This is a book that we oftentimes offer on the program, Mike. I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that.

And two in a row, this is. Yeah. And it's a book, honestly, it's a book that I've benefited from and also people in my church have benefited from. We've used it for new members, for people wanting to be baptized, because like you said, it just sort of gets into the core doctrines of the Christian faith. And one of the things that I often say about Core Christianity is I think people hear that and they think, okay, I want to go to the deeper stuff.

I get the doctrine of the Trinity, I get the incarnation, I believe that the Bible is God's word. But the reality is, what we're finding is so many people actually don't get that stuff. We just sort of assume that we know it. When in reality, we've never studied the doctrine of the Trinity or the doctrine of the incarnation, so it's really important for us to dig in. Yeah. Not take anything for granted.

Yeah, not take it for granted. And it's as we know who God is through his word that we come into a deeper relationship with him. And so we are offering this resource once again, Core Christianity.

And Bill, can you give the details on that? All you have to do is go to our website corechristianity.com forward slash offers and look for Dr. Horton's book, Core Christianity. We know this will help you grow spiritually and understand the core tenets of the Christian faith. Again, go to corechristianity.com forward slash offers to find it. Well, let's go to one of our phone lines. This is Matt from Sacramento, California.

Matt, what's your question for Adriel and Mike? Hey guys, I just wanted to say real quick, I've been a youth pastor up in this area and been doing that for a few years and I had a student actually a few months ago who was struggling through just questions about the charismatic gifts and she found this show on her own and was helped a lot by it. So first off, thank you guys for that is a huge blessing to her and to our ministry. My question has to do with just a lot of the division and disagreements that have come up in the church a lot of the controversy a lot of the the weaving and going to different churches and shifting in this last year has happened over issues like masks vaccines politics, whatever and in very little of it actually has to do with the Bible itself. So my question is why are we so caught up in these things and why do we have so few questions? It seems about Scripture and our questions primarily just have to do with the politics of our day such a huge and important question.

I mean, this is I it's on my heart to man. I think we're in a situation right now where the church has to decide whether it's about Christ or it's about something else, you know, it's about the elephant or the donkey. It's about the you know, right side of the aisle or the left side of the aisle the church is about Christ. What's interesting to me is you cannot find anything going on in our society today that wasn't going on in the Roman Empire. That's why Paul mentions what he mentions in the lists when he talks about how the Gentiles are full of immorality and ungodliness. It was very much like our day and at the same time Paul turns his guns as it were on fellow Jews and says what you're in no better shape. In fact worse because you claim to have the law you claim to have the Judeo-Christian ethic, but you live like the Gentiles. So now you have hypocrisy and self-righteousness added on top of that. I think we have that going on today too. So we can't just say well, we have all this immorality going on. We also have the immorality of Christian behavior right now and that is an offense to God both of it's all an offense to God, but especially Christians who name the name of Christ and then blaspheme his name among the Gentile that is a serious problem.

How do we get out of this? The fear of God is the beginning of understanding going to raise our eyes from America to the Celestial City with angels and archangels singing Holy Holy Holy Lord God of hosts. We have to raise our eyes toward heaven and in the book of Daniel you have that great dream that Nebuchadnezzar King Nebuchadnezzar this powerful arrogant boastful guy has.

He's walking on the top of his penthouse suite looking down at this great Babylon which I have built for my power and my majesty. He has this dream and then it's fulfilled and in the fulfillment of it it's really tragic. A guy begins to live like an animal. His hair grows out like a bird, sticky, long fingernails, curled fingernails. He loses his sanity and he says then after those days I raised my eyes to heaven and my sanity was restored. Now I realize God is sovereign over all the kingdoms of men and he gives them to whomever he chooses and nothing, nothing can hold back his hand. No one can ask what are you doing?

That is when he said he had his sanity. It's insane the way we're living right now because our eyes are focused on this website, that website, that guru, this guru over here, that political figure. We're focused on ultimate things.

Not that these things aren't important but they're not ultimate. As Christians we rally around the cross and resurrection of a Jewish Messiah. That is our central axis and if anything else is central in the life of the church or the life of the Christian we dry up and wither. And so a church that preaches Christ however small, however large, a church that preaches Christ and delivers Christ to sinners including Christians week after week is a beautiful garden growing in the middle of a vast desert. But the minute it stops preaching Christ it withers and eventually becomes part of the desert again. Matt I know that Mike is just as devastated by this reality that we're seeing in many of the churches around us where you have these kinds of divisions over mask mandates and vaccines and so on and so forth.

And I think it just really highlights Matt the fact that as Mike was saying there our focus is in the wrong place. And in one sense this is all exposing I think a great weakness in the church today. We're not as united around Christ and his gospel as we should be as maybe we thought that we were. We're putting too much hope in this world and looking at the problems of this world as ultimate.

And the solution isn't for many of us the gospel and the hope that Christ gives to us. I love that in the New Testament oftentimes Christians are referred to as sojourners and aliens. Yeah, we're a part of this world. We live in it. We're called to do good, to love our neighbors. Yeah, but we also have this ultimate citizenship in heaven.

And I wonder sometimes as people get caught up in these discussions and everything just seems to be so politicized right now. I wonder sometimes if so many believers in the church today haven't lost sight of that, that ultimate hope. And so I appreciate your question. I pray that your church, the church that you're at, is clinging to the gospel and that you guys are united around the message of Christ. And it's so sweet to see that when we are there as churches, yeah, we do experience these difficulties, right?

There are people in the church who maybe disagree on these things, who are coming to these problems from different perspectives. But what holds us together is the gospel. And when the gospel is what binds us together, then despite our differences, we're able to come together to the same table to worship the Lord.

And we realize that that's ultimate. It's the blood of Jesus Christ that unites us. It's the blood of Jesus Christ that gives us hope. It's the blood of Jesus Christ that keeps us together in the midst of all of the divisions. Be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.