reChurch Podcast
Welcome to the reChurch Podcast, hosted by Justin and Brooke Knoop.
As we speak, there is a massive number of people leaving the institutional Church...but interestingly, they aren’t walking away from Jesus. Many of us have noticed a significant gap between what we see in the Bible and what we experience on Sunday mornings. Let’s talk about it.
reChurch Podcast
Every Church MUST Start Here or it's Doomed to Fail (Discipleship Masterclass) | #reChurch Ep. 25
We call the church back to Hebrews 6 and Acts 2, laying the foundation of repentance, baptism, and the Holy Spirit before chasing advanced topics. We share how slow, repeated teaching and action-based discipleship produce lasting fruit and reproducible faith.
• why foundations precede maturity and ministry
• Hebrews 6 essentials: faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Spirit
• Acts 2 as the pattern of gospel response
• repentance as specific confession and changed action
• baptism as burial of the old life and clear conscience
• receiving the Holy Spirit for assurance and power
• reading Scripture in context across covenants
• avoiding knowledge without obedience and pride
• simple, reproducible discipleship in homes
• fruit that follows months of foundation focus
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You know, every house must be built on a foundation, otherwise the house will crumble. The Bible talks about that foundation being Jesus Christ, but more specifically, in Hebrews chapter six, the Bible speaks of foundational or element elementary, yeah, elementary principles of our faith, like things that every believer should know. Hebrews 5 talks about uh he says you should all be teachers by now, but I'm having to go back and teach you the elementary principles of the faith. And he says, I won't move on until we've done that. That tells me that there's something very, very important about these foundational principles of our faith. What I see today in the churches are that we're skipping over the foundational principles, going into other things without people actually getting a good grasp of this, and it's detrimental to not only the church at large, but people's walks of faith. Why is it detrimental? Because we're discipling people that have been in the church system for years and we're having to go back and start over and start fresh because we in the church think, oh, that's not that's not important. Those are those are things everybody knows that, you know what I'm saying? What do you think it means? Um or what is it, what is the what is the effect that it's having? What have you observed on the body of Christ that the churches are not teaching foundational principles?
SPEAKER_02:I just think it's so interesting that you have a church community of people or a church system that's developed and they kind of glaze over the gospel, or maybe maybe they share the gospel, you know. But on the moment of being baptized, you're not instantly teaching them to preach the same gospel they've been taught. Which again, I it goes back to like, are the churches preaching the full gospel? But they're you're not you're not training them to first obey everything Jesus commanded us to obey. You're not teaching them how to share their faith with those around them, like thoroughly share their faith, right? Not just regurgitate what you're saying behind a pulpit and actually lead people through what it means to be born again, just like Jesus says in in John chapter three of water and spirit. And then you don't teach them how to cast out demons, you don't teach them how to heal the sick, you don't teach them how to, you know, baptize others. You teach them to bring them to you to do all those things. But then we'll sit there and like within two weeks, they're gonna know they should tithe. In a couple of weeks, they're gonna hear Christianese and be like, oh, there's a rapture.
SPEAKER_01:Like they know all the worship songs, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_02:And every worship song and all of these things, but you know, in in one of the letters, I think it's maybe in Hebrews, I'm not sure. Is it Hebrews that talks about how like Paul's like, or whoever wrote Hebrews is like, I want to go on to mature things, but I can't with you because you're too immature. Like, shouldn't we be foundationally establishing Hebrews chapter six really thoroughly so that a year from now, two years from now, we can talk about mature things? You know? Like, why is it in the body of Christ we just skip over Hebrews six where it says, I cannot go any farther with you because you're not mature enough yet? You see what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So why are we in the in the institutional church just from topic to topic, from teaching to teaching, like one week we're here, or maybe let's say we go through a series together? Are you actually holding them accountable to apply? And if they haven't applied, why are you moving on to something different?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think we're talking about the same stuff over and over.
SPEAKER_02:Like if any of you in here have raised, which you're not in here with us, but you're in your home watching, and I'm in your home with you right now, like raise your hand if you've raised children. How many times have you had to teach them the same thing over and over again? And five years later, they still don't get it, right? It's not because, not always is it because you're a bad teacher. It could be you need to try a new method, maybe, on like getting them to learn these simple concepts. But why are we moving on to other things if they haven't grasped these simple concepts yet? But in the church, like we're not really teaching them. Like, I talked to a girl last night, like, well, you know, I've just kind of gave my life to Jesus recently, um, haven't been baptized yet, but I'm in a a thing where they're teaching me how to evangelize. I'm like, she hasn't even experienced baptism, but she's supposed to go evangelize and baptize people. Like, what? Like, she doesn't even know. She's like, I don't, and I'm like, you've never been baptized. And she's like, no, I'm she's like, I really don't know why it's important. I'm like, what? But you're in an event evangelism training and you you don't know why it's important. Like, that's the foundation. Like, back up and like, let's start again, right? Like, even when I talk to people who've been in the church for 20 years and would consider themselves mature, when I go back to the foundational things, they don't understand them. And that is reproducing premature births in the kingdom of God, little premature babies. And if anybody's ever taken care of a premature baby, they're a lot of work, right?
SPEAKER_01:I I want to pause for a second because what we're telling you, don't breeze over this. Like, really, you might have to listen to this episode. This is probably the most important thing we talk about. This is going to be an absolute master class on uh discipleship, like what you are called to do as a believer in regards to other people that you quote unquote minister to. Like, if you can understand this, it will give you direction no matter what you face, whatever the person comes at you with. This is and we we don't we don't teach this in the church. It's so insane. And let me just define a few terms because I know there's a couple people in their head going, well, what are the foundational principles? And then what is the full gospel and all this stuff?
SPEAKER_02:So I'm gonna yeah, go through that. I feel like we're supposed to go a certain way in a minute, but yeah, go for it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll just clear that up real quick. So Hebrews 6 talks about the foundational principles. It talks about uh faith, talks about repentance from dead works, repentance from uh sin dead works, talks about the laying out of hands, which is receiving the Holy Spirit, talks about uh says washing rites, or some some translations say baptism. So you got those four elements faith, repentance, water baptism, and the Holy Spirit. And then the two other things it talks about is uh eternal judgment and um resurrection of the dead, resurrection of the dead, and judgment day.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Look it up. We're doing so great. Those first four elements are important.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The other one's just gonna come.
SPEAKER_02:Like you're not gonna, if you're born again, you're not gonna And the reason those other two are there is because there were people within the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees who were conflicted on is there life after death? So we all know that there is in this day and time. Well, if you're in the body of Christ, you would know that. But um, but it is something to teach that's important. But the four main the four foundational things that's the most important is faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Spirit. And once you've received all four of those foundational things, you are truly for born again, ready to be discipled. And then go convert and make disciples. Yeah. The same way that Hebrews 6 says you should. Don't skip the steps, do all four. Healthy disciple on your way.
SPEAKER_01:And what's interesting, the last thing I want to think say on that is that in the previous chapter, the reason he won't move on to deeper things is because um they're not maturing. And he defines what maturity is, and that's he says, defining good from good from evil. How do you how do you go into maturity? He says, um, by practicing righteousness. And so there was an element that they could not, he also says you should be teachers by now. So they had heard this stuff, but they weren't practicing it, and they weren't able to teach it to others. So that tells us that we should probably hang out there for a really long time until people grasp that. And you wouldn't believe what happens when you just hang out on those foundational elements for months and months and months and months and months, the fruit that it produces in people's life. Not only the fruit that it produces in their life, because they're having to deal with things. Give you a prime example. Okay, let's talk about repentance. So you have a night where you're talking about what repentance is, and by golly, to their knowledge, repentance was just praying a general prayer to God saying, forgive me of all my sins, and then we move on. Not understanding that the word means not only a change of mind, like I go from not following God to I want to follow God, but actually a change of heart and a change of action. Circumcision of the heart. Yeah, and oh my goodness, like it's actually helpful for me to think about the thing I'm repenting of and what it was specifically. You know, like it says in the scriptures and in the gospels where people were coming to John the Baptist and they were actually confessing their sins, sins, right? The things that they were doing uh before being baptized. And uh, and what happens when we bring those things into the light is healing and freedom actually takes praise, takes place because we're actually calling out, we're telling God what we need to be saved from, right? What we need to be rescued from. So when you start to talk about repentance like that to people, you better believe that the Holy Spirit's gonna start bringing up stuff in people's hearts and they're gonna start dealing with it. And that's where transformation takes place. We're teaching people to just repeat after me. And then it leaves no room for the Holy Spirit to actually deal with those specific things in your heart. But when you ask a person, like, hey, what do you need to be rescued from? Like, what are you in bondage to? And all of a sudden they start to think of the things that have a grip on them, and then they can interact with God and ask for God to heal them and set them free of those things. That's where you'll see deliverance break out. That's where you'll see uh mindsets be transformed, right? The the mind being renewed because truth is coming in, because until you reveal the lie, you can't actually combat it with truth. So it just stays this hidden lie. So somebody is dealing with some insecurity because when they were, you know, at a younger age, they were told they were stupid a hundred million times by their parent. And then when they're coming to Christ, they're just saying, God forgive me of my sins, and they're actually not addressing any of that stuff. You know, or the person has had like, say, an abortion or whatever. And so when you lead them to Christ, they just say, God forgive me of all my sins, and they they move on. And they never actually deal with like what actually took place in that in that actual sin. Right. Like you don't a lot of times just see, you know, fruit, you know, fruit from that. It just it just stays.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:And there are detrimental effects from not dealing with that. And so that's why we say the foundational principles are so important is because when you're discipling someone, the very first interaction you have with them in a discipleship relationship is you should be addressing their foundation. Like it's like when what does an inspector do when they go up to a house that you're looking to buy? You would literally hire somebody to go up and inspect that house. And one of the major things they inspect is the foundation. Because no matter how pretty that house looks, if you look down at the bottom wall that's holding that house up and there's a massive crack throughout it and it's shifted sideways, I don't care how pretty the house is. You are not gonna buy that house.
SPEAKER_02:No. And if the wind blows, it might fall down.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But we're not doing that in in in our faith. Paul, the prime example of this is is the Apostle Paul. He was a foundation checker. In Acts chapter 19, he's heading to Ephesus and he runs into some disciples of John. First question he asks is, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Well, by golly, Paul, I thought we got it automatically.
SPEAKER_00:Oops.
SPEAKER_01:And they're come to find out. I'm glad he asked that question because they were like, What's the Holy Spirit? Never heard of it. Him.
SPEAKER_03:Oop.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And he's like, Well, let me tell you about that. And they're like, he's like, Well, his next question is, Well, who the heck baptized you?
SPEAKER_02:Old Johnny.
SPEAKER_01:Why don't you know this? He was probably thinking, like, man, if it's somebody else, they're in trouble. No, they didn't even tell you about the Holy Spirit. Nowadays, it's like, oh yeah, and there's this thing. Nowadays it's not even, oh yeah, and there's Holy Spirit. It's oh yeah, and there's baptism eventually if you want to, or if not, whatever, you know. No big deal. You know, dude, if you can, just make sure you come to church and tithe. But you don't have to be baptized.
SPEAKER_02:I know people know more about tithing than they know about baptism. I'm like, what? Why is that? They'll fight for that. Like it is.
SPEAKER_01:White tooth and nail for that, but not for baptism. They treat it as like it's a bad thing. Yeah. I'm like, what are you talking about? Right. So that's why these things are important because these this is the the gospel. By full gospel, we mean everything that Jesus died to give you. Like what it's the gospel is good news, the full gospel is the full good news. That's right. I can't be any clearer than that. So, what do we mean by not teaching the full gospel? We mean by teaching the partial good news in any shape or fashion. There's the partial good news and there's the false good news. There's the false gospel that Corinthians to Paul talks about in Corinthians as well. So those are the main things that we focus on when we're uh, you know, moving into really building the disciple, building the person, making sure they understand the real gospel, making understand staking sure that they understand how to respond to the gospel, and then making sure that they understand uh the foundational principles of their faith, which has to do with the with the response to the gospel as well.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think it's interesting because you know, we moved to Austin and the Lord gave us like six really solid disciples that we met with pretty regularly and started pouring into and going over the foundational things. And once they kind of felt ready, we opened up our home and we're like, hey, bring in the lost, bring in the the poor, bring in the whoever. And we're gonna have a discovery group. These are groups where not everyone's born again. Maybe they're just religious, maybe they're lost completely, and maybe they're just starting to question, is God real? You we bring them into our home and we've been doing this for five weeks now, and we've preached the same gospel every single time. And some of these people come back all five weeks. And I look at them, I'm like, I'm sorry you're gonna hear it again. And you're gonna probably hear it 2,000 more times before we move on. We literally go through Acts chapter two over and over and over and over again until every person in that room has truly turned their heart towards God, repented, changed their minds, circumcised their hearts through true repentance, who've been water baptized and buried their sin six feet under, come up a new creation and have received the Holy Spirit. And once that group goes through that birth, then we're gonna move on. But the beautiful part of it is we're not even moving past the gospel. We're not gonna move on to eschatology because I don't care what you think about the eschatology realm. We're gonna teach them how to reproduce what they've just received in someone else. We're gonna teach them how to plant seeds and water seeds through the gospel. We're gonna teach them how to walk someone through obedience to Jesus and how to hear his voice the same way they're being discipled to do now. And watch how quickly it reproduces. Two years from now, y'all, there will be so many house churches that in Austin, Texas, you're gonna be blown away. And half of them aren't even gonna know who I am.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's the beautiful part of it. Because they're not gonna bring them back to me, they're gonna know how to do it in their own home because they've lived it and they're gonna just reproduce what they've experienced inside of their inside of my home.
SPEAKER_01:Simple as the eschatology we care about is that you know Jesus will return one day. That's right. Right. And he'll judge the world. Um, the reason that people want to get into typically a lot of times, the when someone early on wants to get into these like major deep topics, it's like a pride thing. It is. And it's like, well, I don't want to have to do the work of actually obeying the simple stuff, right? So if you're not obeying the simple stuff, but you're obsessed with these 12 end times prophecy books and fully understanding your eschatology.
SPEAKER_02:You haven't even baptized one person. Show up.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's a distraction. Yes, it's a distraction. And what you're doing is you're covering up your lack of fruit with knowledge. That's right. I know it because I did it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right. I covered up the fact that I wasn't actually obeying the simple things by filling myself with more knowledge and getting addicted to these videos that it feels like forbidden information, or like if you know it, it elevates you spiritually.
SPEAKER_02:I'm just sitting here thinking, like, I can I go back to our kind of story. You know, you came to the Lord first, but it went very quickly from relationship to head knowledge. And then three years later, I'm late to the game. I come into Jesus, and I mean, it just came all about relationship and true repentance, right? And freedom in the Holy Spirit. And I remember the amount of fruit I saw, and Justin was like, Hold up. This chick is like making me uncomfortable. And so you went to Bible college so that you could outlearn. And I'm over here just pouring into people and people's lives are being transformed. And he's like, But I know everything. She doesn't know anything, you know? And I just, that's what's being reproduced in the church. Like we have these young people, we're seeing it right now. There's this massive movement in young people right now in their late teens, early 20s, even into early 30s, that are getting into this reformed theology where they're coming into the body of Christ, they're going to the institution, and they're actually going more conservative than charismatic now, because we've seen so, I mean, all charismatic churches being exposed right now on a high scale, right? Um, you know, they're all being exposed because a lot of them have corruption in them. Anyway, so people are going hard to the other side, to the right, where they're like, oh, let's go back to this reformed Calvinistic understanding where we just puffed up with head knowledge. Why don't we just get back to the real gospel? Like, who gives a crap about charismatic? Who gives a crap about, you know, these reformed all this stuff? Like, let's just go back to the foundations of the good news, the response to the good news and just making disciples. It doesn't matter about predestination and all this drama, just make disciples. And like the Bible says, the wheats and the tares will be sifted at the end. But we're over here like, I have to know this theology when it is not a foundation. Like, it's okay to learn those things later on, but maybe baptize a few people first before it even matters. Like you're not even mature until you re-pro like is a 15-year-old who has or an 18-year-old or 21-year-old who's never had a child, do I consider them mature until like you've had a kid? Woo, have some children. It'll mature you really fast, right? So, like, should we be out here, you know, worried about the fancier things in the Christian world and Arminianism against Calvinism, whatever you want to call it, all these fancy big Christian lingos we have, and we've not even baptized or made a single disciple yet.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Why are we teaching them? Why are we pushing them into seminary schools, puffing them up with knowledge, and then wondering why when they get out, they're full of pride and they still haven't baptized a single soul?
SPEAKER_01:What? Well, I think, you know, one thing is it it's it's not like the church, the body of Christ is the only one susceptible to this. The world is now because information is more accessible than it's ever been. So I think that's one of the issues is before you actually had to go to a seminary to get this knowledge. Right. If you wanted doctrine outside of what you could read in your own Bible, have someone mentoring you. Yeah. And so, but now you can just click on any topic you want on YouTube and watch about it. And so that's where you have people being puffed up, feeling like they're actually doing something when they're not doing anything, right?
SPEAKER_02:I'll literally have people want to argue with me, and they've never baptized a single soul, but they want to argue with me tooth and nail why institutionalism and this and that. And I'm like, you're not even qualified. To like argue this comment. I'm sorry, like you haven't even made a disciple. There's one person ringing in my mind right now. And like they will sit there and argue with you. And I'm like, okay, honey.
SPEAKER_01:It's like a sing, like a single 17-year-old arguing about parenting or something like that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, to a parent who's raised, you know, four 25-year-olds. Like, I'm like, uh, it just doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not saying there's no chance that you're right, but uh it's a low chance.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, low chance, yeah. Anyways.
SPEAKER_01:No, yeah. And yeah, so if you look at the way that that um Jesus discipled and things like that, it was it was action-based. And so we're not saying that you shouldn't go on to unconscious things and more mature things.
SPEAKER_02:But if we're talking about foundation checking, let's start at the foundation, let's understand the foundation. It would just be like a contractor going to contracting school and then coming back back like out of it and being like, oh, the foundational parts are really silly. Like, I'm ready to get to decorating those walls and painting. Like, no, that contractor would build one house and never get hired again because the house would fall. Their most important understanding is the foundation. That's the that's the longest part of building a house. We were in a journey of potentially building a house and the Lord changed our plans. Thank you, Jesus. He knows best. But the foundational part was the most important part. It took forever to even get to the point of breaking ground because the land had to be just right, the soil had to be right, had to be leveled. And then you had this process of developing a foundation and breaking ground and building the foundation. And then once the foundation is built, it's like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, real quick. But it's the most important part. And we breeze right past it. And pastors are looking around, like, why does my flock suck? Why is my flock still living in sin? Why is my flock still acting like they're of the world? That's that's the first problem. And second of all, like, why are they acting like the world? Because they ain't even born again to begin with. Yeah, you just led them to an altar call. That is not being born again.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You're discipling non-believers.
SPEAKER_02:Hashtag non-believers. Sorry. They're not getting it. They're not getting it. It's like because they are not regenerated. They don't have the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01:Now you're using reform terms. Oh, yeah. I'm just kidding. No, but you're absolutely right. So that's why that is so important. And it's really golly, if you can just get that. That has helped us in every scenario with every person.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:And I think Paul followed Paul followed that. I think about how smart Paul was. And um, there are things that I have studied out and I know, and I don't even talk about them. That's right. Unless there's like a specific conversation that brings them up.
SPEAKER_02:But I know I look at people, they'll sit in a room and they'll ask these questions. And I'm just like in my heart kind of like laughing because I'm like, wow, Justin spent 10 years studying that topic, but he's not even going to talk to you about it because it's pointless. Like it's pointless, right?
SPEAKER_01:Some of my because we think a little bit differently. So like I do see value in understanding a lot of those topics. Right. Um, but for me, it's more, it's more because I look at the fruit a theology produces. That's right.
SPEAKER_02:So if you're not looking for um, well, for you, I think it's you manifesting and expressing the fullest nature of God. And some of those topics hindered you from doing that because you're like, I have to fully grasp his nature. So I'm gonna dig into this place and spend five, six years digging in, but not so that you could puff yourself up. There was a season of that, but now for you, it's more of I'm doing this because I wanna because if I understand the fullness and nature and character of God, I'm gonna manifest his love in a deeper, more broader, in a in a more pure way, right? But it's not so that you can debate people on their views of things. Like a lot of times people will bring things up and I'm looking at them, I'm like, gosh, Justin could like literally debate you under the table on this topic. But you won't even like, you don't even like talk to them about it. You kind of actually steer them away, which I think Jesus did that a lot, where you know, topics would be brought up and he would just give them a simple answer. Well, it wasn't that way from the beginning. Like he could have broke it all the way down, you know, because he was from the beginning. But he's just like, Well, just wasn't that way from the beginning, just so simple, and you're very similar to that way. And I'm thinking, like, no, Justin, give him more. But then at the same time, like, what what do I what do we gain from that? Nothing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because then it's like if your only if your only goal is to prove them wrong, that's right. Both lose.
SPEAKER_02:You lost, yeah. That's right.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but theology, the study of God, is meant for you to like understand God. That's right. And you, you know, you study those things, you study eschatology, because for me personally, uh the the typical common view was so negative and depressing. I was like, man, I saw a couple scriptures that this doesn't really line up with, and it also makes me really sad about the future. And like, is that right? And that caused me to really study it out until I came to a biblical conclusion of a more like like positive, hopeful eschatology based on scripture and things Jesus said and He promised. And it's made me more excited about the future and more hopeful for the fulfillment of the Great Commission and um more proactive in your faith, more proactive in my faith, and I feel like I'm on the w, you know, like we're winning. Right. And and so it was that reality of that eschatology that changes everything uh of that theology on eschatology that changes everything in my life, but it's not something I need to go out and convince people of because it was more so for me and my understanding of God. And if people want to discuss it, I discuss it, but I don't have to, it doesn't have to become my thing.
SPEAKER_02:No, you know what I'm saying? And it's definitely not the foundational thing we teach anyone.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right, right. It's um I try I try to avoid honestly a lot of those conversations because I feel like people can get hung up.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Hung up. And so a lot of times I move from early on when I would talk to people about certain topics, especially if I knew there were different views throughout church heresy, where church history church history, where people would um, it wasn't necessarily heresy to believe it. So that's where our words got mixed up. There are certain church topics that the church was split over, but it wasn't heretical. So, like some people believe this and some people believe this. Some people are pre-mill, some people are post-mil, some people are omil, but it's not considered, oh, if you're a mil, you're a heretic. Right. You know what I'm saying? Right. So it's like on those things, I like to present them in a way now where it's like, um, hey, there's a couple different ways that you could go about this, and there are different things that people believe. Sometimes I'll tell people my views, sometimes I won't, and then just let them figure it out.
SPEAKER_02:Wrestle through themselves.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But we always say, I mean, again, going back to that group we have on Wednesday, like each week there's new people coming in and out, flowing through. And every consensus after the meeting is over, they come to us and say, I learned more tonight than I've learned 10 years in the church. Or I've learned more tonight or in the past two weeks than I have, you know, the past six months in my church, because I've only been to church for the past six months. Like that's what you should be hearing when you're preaching the fullness of the value of the foundation of the gospel. Like it can't just be the five steps to a good prayer life. They're not even born again yet. What prayer life are you talking about? You know, like yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Or it turns into just like motivational. That's right. Motivational message. And so, um, do you think that why do you think that pastors don't spend much time on the foundational principles?
SPEAKER_02:I don't think half of them know what it fully is to begin with, or how important it is. Um, and I think if they preach the same message every single Sunday, they would lose money. People would get bored. But that's a good thing. Let them get bored because the ones that aren't bored are the ones that are there for the because the spirit is drawing them.
SPEAKER_01:So Yeah, that's unfortunate. But yeah, so what like talk to me about these foundational principles. So you got repentance, you got faith, you got baptism, you got what can I read Acts two? Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, let me read it and pull up my Bible.
SPEAKER_01:And so, real quick, the context we usually bring people through is um a really important thing when you're talking to people about the scripture, is uh you really have to understand what part of the Bible you're reading and where you are to understand like how I should interpret this. And so when you look at the Old Testament, you have to realize this was in an old covenant. So God's relationship with his people was was quite different. It wasn't the same as it was, you know, in the New Testament or more specifically in the letters. You've got the Old Testament where God's people, Israel, are in relationship with God, but God is is is leading them in a certain direction, but they're under the law, right? You have this intertestamental period where there's silence, no prophets are speaking, God is not speaking to his people leading up to when Jesus comes on the earth. You've got the four gospels. One of the major mistakes people make is they look at the gospels because they're in the New Testament of the Bible, that the Gospels are under the new covenant, but there's a transition period during the Gospels to where Jesus hadn't died and resurrected yet. So some people were interacting under the old covenant. So Jesus is giving specific instructions to Pharisees and to people and to the thief on the cross and all these different things where people like to bring up those interactions with how conversions took place and how the gospel was being preached, and you can't necessarily look at the gospels for a prime example of how to respond to the gospel as we would because Jesus hadn't died yet, and people don't get that. So when you're looking at the gospel after resurrection, this is pre-resurrection. Yeah, you have to understand that. So that's why people are like, Well, the thief on the cross wasn't baptized. First of all, I'm like, how do you know that? You don't know he wasn't baptized. And number two, the thief on the cross was in the old covenant because Jesus hadn't died, rose again. We're talking post-resurrection of the Holy Spirit. Now you move on to the book of Acts, where Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Father. He sends the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter two. And this is the only place that we actually see true descriptions of conversions of unbelievers into believing. And we get these descriptive, sometimes they're mentioned mentioning, you know, repentance, faith, water baptism, reception of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes they're mentioning just a few different elements. But we have to understand that during the book of Acts, this is the only documented place where we see after the death of Jesus and the resurrection, the Holy Spirit is sent. This is where we see descriptions of conversions taking place. So we can look at how the gospel was preached and how it was uh people responded to it. Then we have the letters, which are the letters to the church, right? Not the letters to the unbeliever. And so we have to understand when those letters are being read, we can't pull those out of context as if they're gospel presentations to unbelievers.
SPEAKER_02:The Romans wrote is not the gospel.
SPEAKER_01:So when they're telling people to believe and confess, it's a present-continuous tense. It's continue to believe and continue to confess. It's not like if you just believe and say something with your lips, you're saved. Like that's what goes on. So I say all that really quickly. You might have to rewind that and listen to it again to know where you are in the Bible determines how you are to read that portion of scripture.
SPEAKER_02:The Romans Road is not the gospel. The Romans Road is a reminder to the church not to go back.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's what it is. So stop preaching as the gospels. The gospel is in Acts chapter two. Um, so Acts chapter two, like you said, is a it's a history book, it's a conversion of the early church, and it's where the old covenant is going obsolete and the new covenant is coming in. We cannot get into the new covenant, the old covenant way. And in Acts chapter two, it tells us very distinctly what it means to be born again. It's the only place in the Bible where the gospel is preached in its entirety and the response in one chapter. Okay. But I always take people, because you have to present the problem before you can get to the solution, correct? So I always take people to chap uh 2 Corinthians chapter 2, um, verse 11 through um, chapter 11, verse 1 through 4. Because here's the thing. We're in America. Everyone's heard the name of Jesus, right? They might not know who Adam and Eve is, but they've all heard of the name of Jesus. They probably understand sin to some capacity. Um, so I can't go to them the same way I would go to someone who's never heard the name of Jesus, right? So I bring them to this verse because Paul is approaching them and correcting them because they're listening to false apostles after he's left and they've responded to his message, right? So Paul comes into writes this letter to the Corinthian church and says, and again, this is 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 1 through 4. He says, I hope you will put up with me in a little foolishness. Yes, please put up with me. I'm jealous for you with the godly jealousy. I promise you to one husband to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin, but I am afraid, just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. If for if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different lowercase spirit from the uppercase spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with this so easily enough. So what Paul is saying here is that there's other gospels out there, there's other Jesuses out there, there's other spirits out there, and there's false gospels out there. And if you respond to one of those gospels that is not the gospel that Paul preached, you're gonna receive a false spirit and a false Jesus. So I have to present that to the American church and the Western church at large. If you receive a false gospel, you will receive the fruit of the gospel you responded to. So let's say you receive the gospel of fear, the fear gospel or the once saved, always saved gospel, which is what I was preached. Like once you come down to this altar and you confess Jesus, Lord, you're saved for the rest of your life. Nothing can change that. Um, or if you don't come down to this altar and pray this prayer right now, you're burning in hell forever, right? It wasn't the kindness of God that drew me to repentance. It was the fear of hell that drew me to repentance, which does not produce righteousness. It produces bondage, right? It produces you live morally externally, but inside is still dirty, is what it produces. You hide your sin from everyone around you and think you're hiding it from God. But I'm once saved, always saved, because I prayed that prayer and I confess and I believe, like Roman says, right? So I sit there and I take him and present that problem. And then immediately I will take them to Acts chapter two. So let's go there. Acts chapter two says this. Well, the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, like a blowing of a violent wind came from the heavens and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be like tongues of fire separated and rested upon each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there we're staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, the crowd came together in bewilderment because each one had heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked, Aren't these all Galilean speaking? Then how is it that I understand and hear my native tongue? And then it lists all these different nations and tongues that were in the same place, but I can't pronounce them very well, so I'm not going to try on YouTube. Um, so going down to uh verse 12, it says, Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, what does this mean? Somehow, uh, some, however, made fun of them and said that they had too much wine. Then Peter stood up between among the eleven, raised his voice, and addressed the entire crowd. Fellow Jews, all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you and listen carefully to what I say. So he's about to preach the gospel for the first time after Jesus died. These people are not drunk as you suspect suspect.
SPEAKER_01:He didn't have the Romans road.
SPEAKER_02:No, Romans wasn't written yet. Isn't that funny? It's only nine in the morning. No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel, and it gives this prophecy where the Spirit of God will be poured out on all men, and this these signs would follow. Fellow Israelites, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth, the man who was accredited by God by wonders, miracles, and signs, which God did among him through uh through him, as you yourselves know, this man was handed over to you by God's deliberate for foreknowledge. And you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. So he's calling out their sin, you murderers. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep him. And then a whole prophecy from David is then given because people thought that maybe David was the one that was going to be resurrected, but it was like, no, David was prophesying about Jesus. And then verse 29 says, Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet who knew that God was promised, promised him an oath that one day one of his descendants would sit on the throne. Seeing what was now to come, he spoke of the resurrected Messiah, that he is not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor is his body going to see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and you are all now witnesses of it. Um, exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and now has poured it out, and now is what you see in here. For David did not ascend to the heavens, and yet he said, The Lord set said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool. Therefore, let all of Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, again, hitting the sin point, both Lord and Messiah. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart. Circumcision. That is repentance. If they are not cut to the heart, if they cry, doesn't mean anything. If they're sorry, doesn't mean anything. If they're even remorseful, it doesn't mean anything. They must be cut to the heart. True circumcision of the heart. They were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, brothers, what shall we do? Peter replied, Repent, be baptized, every one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sin. Repentance and baptism deals with sin. Repentance cuts you off from sin. Baptism buries your old life in sin. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. You cannot miss those things. You cannot miss. You need to do all three of those things. What does it mean to be born again? Repent, be baptized, received for the promise of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and all who are far off, for all whom the Lord has called. Here we are. That is the gospel.
SPEAKER_01:But that's the simplest form.
SPEAKER_02:What do you talk about?
SPEAKER_01:What do you want to do is believe?
SPEAKER_02:No. Believing is not mentally agreeing. In James chapter five, it says the demons believe in Jesus and they tremble, but they cannot be re redeemed. Believing is not a mental head knowledge understanding. True believing is repentance, baptism, Holy Spirit. If Jesus said, if first of all, if Jesus was baptized, he was doing it because we should be baptized. First of all. Second of all, if Jesus said to you to be born again, and it says in John chapter 3, Nicodemus is sitting there with Jesus having this conversation. And he says, How do I, how do I be born again? is the terminology that Nicodemus said. And Jesus says, to be born again, you must be born of water and spirit. We understand repentance is a part of that, right? The Jews were very thorough in the repentance area. They knew what it meant to truly repent, right? Well, with animals and things like that. He understood that, but he was like, you must be born of water and spirit. Nicodemus is like, What? I gotta be birthed by my mom twice? How's that gonna work? I'm an old man. He's like, no, dude. He's like, if you can't grasp this, like, how are you gonna get it? He's like, you must be born of water, water baptism, and Holy Spirit. And I know there's a lot of debates in the theological world on how they break that down, but it is just what it is water and spirit. Get over your your hoops that you want to jump through. Born of water and spirit, it's in red letters. So if Jesus came and said, Spin on your head five times to enter into the kingdom of God, what are you gonna do? Repent, spin on your head, receive? You're gonna do that. But bruh. Are you believing like the Catholics believe you must be baptized to be born again? I have to just believe you must be born again. And how do you get born again? You repent, you be baptized, you receive the Holy Spirit. Just like the birth of a baby, they must cut the umbilical cord, they must be washed, they must cry. It's got if all those steps don't take place, something's gonna be wrong.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:With that. So that's where people are like, they hear that and they're like, so you believe uh uh baptism saves you? And I'm like, I believe Jesus saves you. Facts. And then they're like, so you don't need to be baptized.
SPEAKER_02:And it's like, what do you talk about? No, but Jesus is not a big thing.
SPEAKER_01:Like, why are we trying to get out of what Jesus told us to do? Right. It's like when people ask that question, it's honestly it's a it's a it's a problem with their foundational understanding of salvation because they see salvation as an instance in time connected to a simple belief. Like as soon as you just like, oh, Jesus is real, you're saved, like everything, boom. And it's like, well, then can you be saved without repenting? Like, why are we separating? They weren't the reason, the reason a lot of those things aren't directly responded to in the letters is because they weren't even thinking about asking those questions. It would make no sense. You can look all through the book of Acts, you can read in First Peter, where it talks about baptism now saves you, not by cleaning dirt off your skin, but as an appeal to God for a cleanse conscious. That's right. So the question we don't need to ask is which one of these elements makes you go to heaven? Right. Okay, because that's not what the Bible is trying to teach. The Bible is trying to teach you that salvation is through Jesus Christ. Now, Jesus Christ gives you a mess, there's a message of good news that you respond to, and this is how you respond. And when you respond, each one of these elements of response is an action of your faith. It's showing that you truly believe. And in each one of these actions of faith, there's an element that man does. When you repent, there's something you do, and there's an element that God does. God forgives you of your sin. Man gets in the water, God cleanses your conscience. He says it right in scripture, not by cleaning dirt off your body, but as a cleansed conscience, like an appeal to God for a cleansed conscience. Romans 6 talks about what baptism accomplishes, not the water. The water doesn't accomplish anything for your physical body. It's your action of faith where God meets you in that action and he does something supernaturally. Now, these elements that take place, something supernatural takes place by God's end that has to do with your overall salvation. People see the word salvation and they think have hell to heaven, but they don't understand that the word salvation, the word say you can be saved from a lot of things. Like I can be saved from being hit by a car, right? I can be rescued. It means to be rescued. The word sozo, the word soteria, to be saved, to be healed, to be delivered, to be rescued. Picture salvation as this um umbrella term. And that's why we can look through the scriptures and specifically in the New Testament, and we can see it used in different tenses. We can see you were saved, you are being saved, and you will be saved.
SPEAKER_02:Past, present, and future.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Romans says the very specific scripture in Romans, look it up, says your salvation is now nearer or closer than when you first believed. Okay. If salvation was just simply uh this this hell-to-heaven moment, then that scripture couldn't be true. And so salvation must encompass different things, like oh, our relationship to sin. Well, God forgives us of our sins. So we're we're helped, you know, we're freed from the repercussions of sin. Eventually, when we uh meet Jesus face to face, we'll be uh we'll be uh freed from the actual presence of sin. Right, but we're not freed from those things yet. So there's this word, that's why we can that's why we can't.
SPEAKER_02:We can be set free from sin on this side of heaven, but you're not free from the presence of sin. So you sin doesn't go away in stumble, yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but it it loses its power over you. Right.
SPEAKER_02:So you lose sin hasn't lost its grip on you, you're not born again yet. Or you need deliverance. Hashtag deliverance.
SPEAKER_01:And we can that could be a whole episode about what do we mean by uh the grip of sin? Well, it means that you're not actively living in perpetual sin. Okay, so there's a difference between um practicing yeah, sinning and practicing sin. When you practice something, you're getting good at it. Go read first John, it'll tell you all about practicers of sin. If you're practicing sin with no conviction and you think you're born again, you're lying to yourself. Not because I said so, not because Brooke said so. Because first John chapter three seven through fourteen says so. But because the scripture says so.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So that was like a um, I know we said we'll do a master class. It would take us multiple hours to break that down specifically. Uh, I don't know. Let us know in the comments if you want us to go further into that. But I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:We could break down, we can maybe go through the gospel, break it down. I don't know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know because this is what we do in our groups and we spend months on the material. But what we're trying to do is just equip you to go further in all of those topics because the reason, the reason that I can speed through and talk through all that stuff, the reason she can talk through that so well is because we've done it hundreds and hundreds of times.
SPEAKER_02:I feel so confident in what I'm saying because I've experienced it, I've seen it work, I've I've learned it, I've breathed it, I've lived it, and I have reproduced it. So it's just within my DNA. It's in the fiber of who I am now. So it becomes so easy to share. Um yeah, I'm just sitting here in my mind like trying to process like, do we do a master class where people just sign in and we just go through these topics?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know what that would look like, but um, we we we go back and forth because I've watched people build, we are very, very conscious of not building a system for you to follow. Um, because we watch people build curriculums, yeah, and it literally becomes like school and it's not you have to understand like you can't do those things. You can read books and whatever, but you cannot create curriculums around this because the spirit is not a curriculum. Like the spirit of God.
SPEAKER_02:You have to learn to be taught by the spirit, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's gonna sound slightly different every time we say it. Every time you share the gospel, the DNA will be the same, the foundation will be the same, but the way you communicate it will be slightly different in the context of the person you're speaking to. Um, prime example of that is if the person you're speaking to, you're sharing the gospel with, uh, they're maybe they they understand that they're in sin and they're living wrong, right? You're not gonna hammer down on them on the law because they already understand that they're already repentant, they're feeling sorry. But maybe they need, maybe they're scared and they need to know what the gospel says about their freedom of sin from sin, from captivity, from fear, all of those things, as opposed to a person you speak to and they're like, I don't sin. And you're like, Really? Right? That's when you, you know, have to come out of more living waters out of them. Have you lied? Have you cheated? Have you stolen? Have you blasphemed? You know, and so there's a reason that he does that because it's laying out the playing field. You're bringing the law up to help the person understand their actual need for a savior. And that's what the whole point of the law was. That's what it says in the scripture.
SPEAKER_02:And until you dig these things out for yourself, it's not going to come out as naturally as it does for us because we've literally thoroughly studied this out for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01:But I promise you, there was a time in my life where I watched other people share scripture, share the gospel. They would share the stories they read in the Bible. And I'm looking at my Bible, I'm reading the same thing. I'm like, it doesn't sound like that when I read it. Like, what is the deal? And I recognize it took years and years and years of people really seeking this out, reading it, digesting it, speaking it, sharing it, helping people, like doing the thing. That's the only place you don't magically wake up with confidence. You build confidence because you've done this over and over and over, and you've seen God work in your life and the lives of others over and over and over. So I hope that was extremely helpful for you. Go back, watch it again, watch it a third time if you need to. You can always comment below. But um, man, that's what we got for foundations. That's the most important thing that we teach, and that's what we do in real life when we decide every single week over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_02:But it doesn't get old. No, I don't get bored of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01:No, neither did Paul. No. He said, I got tons of fancy words and eloquent speech that I can do. All I'm gonna give you is the gospel. But I won't do that because it would it would make it would devoid God of his power, like it would remove power from the gospel. So I I want you to not overcomplicate it. Not overcomplicate it, but I want you to not look at me in my fancy speech, right? But I want you to understand and see the power of God through the simple gospel. So good. All right, we'll see you guys in the next one.