Conversion Before Discipleship: Why the Gospel Must Come First

Conversion Before Discipleship: Why the Gospel Must Come First

Outlined Transcript

Hi everyone,

In this video, I want to follow up on the previous lecture I gave introducing the ideas behind disciple-making movements, church-planting movements, and the broader movement mentality. Here, I want to summarize some of the main teachings.

As I said in the previous video, what I am going to say does not necessarily draw directly from the original source material. I am familiar with David Garrison’s work, the Watsons and their books, and many of the other people who have contributed to the vast amount of literature surrounding disciple-making movements and their various tributaries. What I am doing here is distilling the issue into points and principles I have observed over the years.

Not everything said in the original books or source material is always captured accurately in the seminars and trainings that missionaries actually experience. I have been through some of those trainings. I have interacted with some of the original authors, especially in earlier years. I have been involved with these issues for about 20 years. But years later, when the original authors are no longer available to conduct their own trainings, what gets taught is not always the best reflection of what they originally intended.

That is typical. Anytime someone takes another person’s content and adapts it for his own purposes, it is bound to change. So what I am saying here is not drawn directly from one specific book or source. I am speaking from what I have observed broadly in various organizations, trainings, conversations, literature, podcasts, and missionary contexts.

What Is DMM?

DMM, or disciple-making movements, spread the gospel by making disciples who make disciples, who learn to obey God’s Word quickly and disciple others to do the same. The goal is to see many new churches planted in regions where Christianity is largely absent.

That is the general idea. But my main concern is this: DMM proponents have built an entire methodology on teachings that are not modeled, prescribed, or clearly found in the Bible.

To be fair, they do use the Bible. This is not all completely original thinking. But the problem is that when they use the Bible, it is often a misapplication of the text. At best, it reflects a misunderstanding of conversion, ecclesiology, discipleship, and even the gospel itself. At worst, it misconstrues and misleads people on those very doctrines.

Obedience-Based Discipleship

One of the core principles of DMM is obedience-based discipleship. What does that mean? Disciple-makers help unbelieving “disciples,” as they sometimes call them, obey Scripture daily as they move toward conversion.

So the order of events is important. Obedience-based discipleship teaches unbelievers to obey the Bible before they are converted. In effect, they are pre-discipling pre-disciples. They are teaching them how to live like Christians, and then somewhere along the way, those people become converts as they grow in obedience to Scripture.

This might sound like simply teaching people the law so they realize they cannot obey it, leading them to cling to grace. But that is not the approach I am talking about. This is different.

This approach assumes that unbelievers have the will, capacity, ability, and desire to obey Scripture. I am not accusing every DMM teacher of outright denying original sin, but functionally, it often appears that they treat people as if they are a blank slate. The assumption seems to be that you simply need to write the right script for them, teach them how to walk in a manner worthy of the Bible or the Word of God, and slowly they will become Christianized. Somewhere along the way, they become Christian.

But instead of preaching the gospel to them unto conversion, this approach often focuses on teaching them to obey. The emphasis is on obedience to the commands of Jesus, regardless of the necessary and essential nature of the regenerate heart. This process could take weeks. It could take months. It could take years before they become an actual believer.

Redefining Faith

This approach also has the potential to redefine faith. Some may not do this explicitly, but I do think some do. I have heard some people redefine faith altogether. I cannot give everybody the benefit of the doubt here, because I have personally heard missionaries who received this kind of movement-methodology training conflate faith and obedience, or faith and faithfulness.

I have heard them reject justification through faith alone. Not simply soft-pedal it. Not simply assume it. Not simply put it on the back burner. I have heard people reject it altogether as a construct of a paranoid Luther in Germany, as though it were the invention of some obsessive monk in the 16th century that has produced easy-believism in the Western world ever since.

They are very passionate about obedience, law-keeping, loyalty, and honoring God through faithfulness to Him. But in doing so, they often conflate faith and faithfulness. They might say that justification by faith is a useful construct for people who come from a more legal, Western background. But for people from a non-Western, non-forensic, non-legal-minded background, they think in terms of faithfulness, community attachment, and community association.

In that framework, a person becomes right with God by honoring Him through faithfulness and loyalty. Then he becomes part of the community. That is presented as the gospel system. That is presented as the process of conversion.

But that is not merely dangerous. It is false.

It can lead people to hell if they buy into it, because people in these pre-Christian cultures are already operating within law-based systems. Whether they are Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or from another religious background, they are already working within a moral code. So when someone presents Jesus as offering honor, life, peace, or power based upon faithfulness to His Word and obedience to Him, that makes sense to the natural mind. Of course it does.

It is one works-based religion exchanged for another works-based religion. It is a lateral move. It makes sense to them because it is the mind of the flesh. This is how the natural mind thinks.

But the things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned. We need to be born again. Our hearts, minds, and souls must be regenerated by the Holy Spirit so that we have the mind of Christ and can discern the things of Christ.

The Biblical Order Matters

This is why the Bible must prick the conscience. The law must expose sin. The Word of God must drive people to Christ. Sinners must be called to flee from their sin, repent, fall at the feet of mercy, and receive the irresistible grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

There is an order in evangelism and discipleship that must be biblical. If we get that order wrong, we risk converting people to a works-based Christianity that promises honor, reward, and status based on levels of faithfulness and obedience to Scripture.

The Jesus of the faithfulness gospel, the Jesus of the obedience gospel, and the Jesus of the allegiance gospel is another Christ. That is not the Jesus of the Bible.

It may use language extracted from the Bible, but that language is being manipulated. Arius did something similar. He took biblical statements, pieced them together with other biblical statements from other contexts, and created an entire system of thought that was not merely unbiblical, but heretical. That is where this leads.

I am not saying everyone who proposes these ideas is a heretic. I am not saying that. But I am saying the consequences of what they teach produce heresy. And if they do not repent of that teaching, if they dig in their heels in the face of biblical instruction, biblical challenge, and faithful criticism, then we must be firm.

As Paul says, if they do not recognize these things, they are not recognized. We must stand firmly on the truth.

Teaching with Patience and Gentleness

That does not mean we should be harsh or impatient. Paul tells Timothy to teach with all gentleness and patience, praying that God might grant repentance.

That is my hope through my writing, teaching, and conversations, including with indigenous believers who ask me these questions because they have been taught disciple-making movement methodology by other missionaries. My goal is to teach, teach, teach with gentleness and patience, perseveringly and enduringly, praying that God would grant repentance through the faithful proclamation, teaching, and exposition of the Word of God.

So pray with me. Thank you for standing with us for the true gospel, the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel Will Grow, But We Cannot Manufacture a Movement

The Gospel Will Grow, But We Cannot Manufacture a Movement

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Outlined Transcript

Hi everyone,

I want to talk to you about some of the issues surrounding disciple-making movements, Discovery Bible Studies, and church-planting movements.

Many years ago — easily over 10 years ago, maybe closer to 15 — I was originally trained in church-planting movements, which were largely founded and developed by David Garrison. Later on, I was trained in disciple-making movements and their product, Discovery Bible Studies, which were popularized by David and Paul Watson.

Since then, the whole movement mentality of DMM — disciple-making movements — has become very popular. It is very common for me to receive requests or emails from other colleagues, missionaries, and mission organizations asking if I have ever written on the good, the bad, and the ugly of DMM and DBS, or Discovery Bible Studies.

And I have not.

I am in the process of writing on these things, and I hope my comments will be helpful and honest. I think there are too many people who are afraid to say things that might be perceived as rebukes, challenges, or critiques because they fear being accused of quenching the Holy Spirit, getting in the way of God, or not having enough faith.

I think those are fallacious arguments.

The Fear of Critiquing “Movements”

Many people are very enthusiastic about these methods, and in many cases, they have been duped or even manipulated by enthusiastic personalities. They hear stories about how God supposedly worked in certain cities, and then they begin to believe that if we can just do what they did — if we can replicate the methods they used to tap into the movement of the Holy Spirit — then we can manufacture the same results in our own context.

Much of this is motivated by a misunderstanding of Matthew 24:14.

The whole motivation behind rapid-cycle church-planting movements is this idea that if we can set into place some sort of movement of God among an indigenous people, using the most basic and fundamental understanding of the church in the Bible, then that movement will duplicate and replicate many times over.

In Matthew 24:14, Jesus says:

“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”

Some people take that verse as our marching orders. They believe it is our job to hasten or speed along the return of Christ by getting the gospel out to all the nations.

Of course, the motivation seems noble. It seems audacious. And in one sense, it is.

But there is no imperative in the text. It is only an indicative. It is actually an indicative of assurance and promise.

Matthew 24:14 as Promise, Not Pressure

Jesus is not saying, “When you bear witness to all the nations, then I will come back.” He does not say that. He does not say, “If you do this, then I will come back.” And He does not say, “You must do this so that I can come back.”

Jesus is not putting the proverbial ball in our court, as if He is saying, “I am going back to heaven, and I will be waiting until you get the job done. I will send you some help. I will send the Holy Spirit, but you have to figure this out — and the quicker you do, the better.”

Jesus is not saying that at all.

Matthew 24:14 is riding on the coattails of the context before it. In Matthew 24, starting around verses 12 and 13 and then moving into verse 14, Jesus talks about how in those days, the love of many will grow cold and lawlessness will be increased. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

So in the context of increased lovelessness, lawlessness, and the need to endure firm to the end by faith, Jesus says:

“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”

Jesus is saying that it will get done.

The Great Commission is going to be finished in the context of immense darkness, lawlessness, and cold-heartedness. When you think all hope is lost, when you think there is no hope for the triumph of the gospel among the nations, it will get finished.

The testimony will go out. The people of God will endure firm to the end, bearing witness to all the nations. And then the end will come.

The end will come because Jesus Himself, through His church, will bring it about. It is not our job to build the church. Jesus is the head of the church, and He says that He is the one who builds His church. He is the one who establishes His kingdom.

It is not our job to build the kingdom.

The Problem with Movement Mentality

The whole premise behind many disciple-making movements and church-planting movements is a movement mentality. To me, this is both frustrating and disheartening.

I am frustrated because many big-hearted missionaries — good-hearted missionaries, exhausted missionaries — get into some of these methods thinking that they have finally figured out how the Holy Spirit really wants to move. They begin to think the Holy Spirit is simply waiting for missionaries to figure out and decode the encrypted puzzles in God’s providence.

If we can just do it right, with unity and purity of heart, with just the right amount of prayer and corporate praying, with unity of purpose among different groups, walking in lockstep with the Holy Spirit — if the city is united under the banners of loving Jesus and loving people — then if we all unite together and put into practice these Discovery Bible Studies, the Holy Spirit will be poured out and we will see movements and movements of people come to faith in Christ.

I love the sentiment. I truly appreciate the optimism. Praise the Lord for the desire to see people come to Christ.

But the reality is that the gospel typically and normally grows slowly, like a seed.

The Gospel Usually Grows Slowly

Once in a while in church history, you do see great accelerations of the Holy Spirit. We usually call those revivals.

But typically, for there to be a revival, there has to already be some kind of Christian plausibility structure in place that the Holy Spirit can revive. In other words, revivals happen in places where there has already been some kind of structure or edifice of the Christian worldview.

There is already a Christian framework that people are familiar with. They may even respect it or appreciate it. They may have rejected it, but they can still see its plausibility. That has to be there in order for it to be revived.

But in pre-gospel contexts — in places where people have not heard the name of Christ, or where they are not familiar with Christian teaching — maybe they have heard of a Bible, maybe they have heard of a church, but they have no idea what goes into the Christian worldview.

There is nothing there for the Holy Spirit to revive.

The Long Slog of Frontier Missions

In frontier missions, there is the long, hard work — the long slog — of sowing seed, pulling out weeds, picking up rocks, and keeping the birds from eating the seed. You know the analogies. There is the work of keeping the seed in fertile soil.

It is long, slow work, and it takes time for seeds to grow.

Then, once there is a harvest, there will be waves and seasons. There will be seasons of drought. There will be seasons of harvesting. There will be seasons of theft, where thieves come in and steal the fruit, the vegetables, and the harvest.

Part of the work of missions includes all the stages involved in actually harvesting and maintaining those crops. But you cannot expect, in frontier missions, the same kind of revivals you might see in Christianized Europe centuries ago or in parts of colonial America generations ago.

You have to do the long, hard, lifetime labor of planting seed, watering it, cultivating it, and protecting it.

In future lectures, I will talk through some of the teachings of disciple-making movements and how we can think biblically about responding to some of those enthusiastic teachings of movement-minded, rapid-cycle church planting.

Thanks.

“I Believe”: Teaching New Disciples to Know and Confess the Faith

"I Believe": Teaching New Disciples to Know and Confess the Faith

Outlined Transcript:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to pick up where I left off before, talking about discipleship, and give you a quick snapshot of something I did with my students recently.

The Grammar of the Gospel

There is a class I have been teaching throughout this semester, and if you remember, I previously talked through Romans 5 and the grammar of the Gospel. I mentioned the importance of paying attention to verbs and prepositions. One thing about English translations is that they are very diverse, but they are also very good and very accurate. For example, in Romans 5, I mentioned the preposition “to,” “for,” or “toward”: “God demonstrates His love for us” or “toward us.”

Some of the languages among my students do not have the same kind of grammar that we have in English. They do not have the same complexity or sophistication in their grammar. Sometimes they do not even have certain kinds of prepositions at all, so there are many things that can be lost. This is why, if a non-native English speaker wants to learn Greek or Hebrew, they often have to learn English first. They have to learn English grammatical categories in order to then learn Greek or Hebrew categories.

In God’s providence and wise sovereignty, He has used English as one of the great languages of the world to transmit and transfer biblical meaning in complex, sophisticated, and yet simple ways. So I have to slow down in my classes. Usually, my students are not native English speakers, and they do not always speak the same language either. Some speak Chinese, Korean, Thai, Khmer, Indonesian, Hindi, Burmese, and a variety of tribal languages. The grammar of the Gospel really is good news, and they know English well enough to think through these kinds of terms.

Memorizing the Apostles’ Creed

One thing I do in my classes is have my students memorize a psalm or a creed, typically the Apostles’ Creed, a couple of Psalms, and maybe something else short. I want to model for them the value of Bible memory and defending the faith by setting their minds on the written Word of God and on certain theological formulations.

Last week, my class had their oral exam. They all memorized the Apostles’ Creed. It was open Bible and open note, but they needed to memorize the Creed. Even if they did not do it perfectly, they were graded based on completion, not perfection. If they stumbled over a word, I helped them along. I simply wanted them to practice saying what the confessing church through the ages has said.

Something significant about the Apostles’ Creed is that it is really short, really simple, and one of the oldest standardized creeds. It collects the theology of the Trinity. It is based in three parts: I believe in the Father, I believe in the Son, and I believe in the Holy Spirit. It is broken up according to the three persons of the Trinity and the way the Bible unfolds their identities and works.

Then you have the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed does not simply collect the nature and identities of the three persons of the Trinity. It connects them. It shows how they are connected. Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, and the Nicene Creed fleshes that out. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and it fleshes that out as well.

So the Apostles’ Creed collects the doctrine of the Trinity. The Nicene Creed connects the doctrine of the Trinity. And the Athanasian Creed corrects errors, or possible errors, about the three persons of the Trinity. Basically, these creeds ground our faith in one God in three persons.

There are other creeds, of course, such as the Chalcedonian Creed, but I try not to get too granular with all the different creeds. I mainly focus on the Apostles’ Creed. I want to slow down and show my students the significance of the wording in the Creed. Then I help them find verses that attach to certain words or phrases so that they can disciple others and teach the basics of the faith.

A Simple Tool for Discipleship

In the early church, the Apostles’ Creed was often used as a discipleship tool before confessing believers were baptized into membership in the church. A person would memorize the Creed and defend it line by line with a disciple-maker, tutor, or what we might think of as the equivalent of a Sunday school teacher today.

When they could satisfactorily define certain parts of the Apostles’ Creed line by line and connect them to Scripture, that was their confession of faith. That was their testimony. Their testimony was not mainly how they met Jesus, how their life changed after conversion, or when they prayed a prayer. That is more of a recent development. A true testimony was more like giving a legal case of what you know to be true before a court or a jury. They were trained to know what they believed and why they believed it.

That is similar to the three things I use in my apologetics classes: source, authority, and definition. Where did you get that information? How do you know it is true? What do you mean? Define your terms.

So I will briefly walk through the first part of the Apostles’ Creed and explain how I quizzed my students. They were prepared for this. I had already told them how I was going to do it, but I wanted to give them a teaching example of how to do this with others.

Maybe they work in language groups that do not yet have a written Bible or a complete written Bible. Maybe the people they are discipling are not readers or do not yet have literacy development. Before you can even translate a Bible, you have to teach people to read. But if they do not even have an alphabet or a written language, that becomes very complicated. Sometimes a short outline like the Apostles’ Creed, teaching people to memorize it and defend it by memory, is a helpful step in discipling people in oral cultures.

So here is the very beginning:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

Then it goes on:

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried. He descended into hell.

And so on. I will not finish the rest of it here.

What Does It Mean to Believe?

After one student recited it, I asked one or two clarifying questions. I said, “I am putting on the hat of a young convert in your discipleship group. I am not wearing my professor hat. So answer my question as though I am just a curious young convert.”

Then I asked, “What is belief? What does it mean to believe in God or believe in Jesus?”

This is one of the greatest issues of the Protestant Reformation. What separates us from Roman Catholic works of righteousness, Roman Catholic mysticism, and all other varieties of unbiblical mysticism and hyper-authoritarian movements throughout church history is the word “faith,” or “faith alone.”

Faith is alone in that it receives all the benefits and blessings of Christ’s work for us, on our behalf, as our substitute. It receives the great exchange of our sin for His righteousness, accomplished on the cross and received through faith alone.

“I Believe” Is Personal

Faith has three identities.

First, it is important to point out that in the Latin, English, German, French, Spanish, and other languages the Apostles’ Creed has been translated into, it is always in the singular. It does not say, “We believe in God the Father.” It does not say, “We believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son.” It says, “I believe.”

That is significant. A lot of times we talk about older cultures or Eastern cultures as being very communal, with everything in the “we” and everything in the plural. But not this creed. Why? Because we are justified as individuals by faith alone before Jesus Christ.

We are not born again and admitted into the family of Christ merely by association with others. We must receive the good news of the Gospel through faith alone and be born again as individuals, because we stand justified or condemned before God as individuals.

We are not saved through a collective. We are not saved through family association. We are not saved simply because we were baptized as infants into a certain church or covenant community. We must individually put our faith in Jesus Christ and receive the gift of regeneration from the Holy Spirit Himself. So the Creed is singular on purpose.

Knowledge, Assent, and Trust

What is belief? I will close with these three things: knowledge, assent, and trust.

First, faith includes knowledge. You have to know truth. You have to know the history of the Gospel. It is not a fable. It is not make-believe. It is not legend. It is verifiable history. So you have to know something.

Second, faith includes assent. You have to agree that these are not just facts, but that they are true. It is not merely that Jesus died historically. It is that what He accomplished on the cross has theological meaning and eternal consequence. It is not simply that a carpenter’s son from Nazareth died outside Jerusalem in a shameful death 2,000 years ago. It is that He is who He claimed to be, and He accomplished what He claimed to accomplish on the cross and in the resurrection.

But third, faith includes trust. Not only do I know that it is true, and not only do I agree that it is true and that it has theological consequence, but I receive it. I trust in it. It is good news for me.

The Good News for Those Who Believe

Maybe in a future video I will flesh this out even more. It is news that Jesus of Nazareth died. Even godless, agnostic, or atheistic professors in Ivy League schools know that, historically speaking. It is good news that what happened historically on the cross, in the resurrection, and in the empty tomb of Joseph of Arimathea has eternal theological consequence.

But even the demons believe that. It is not true for them in the sense that they are saved by it. They do not receive it. They know that Jesus is the Son of God, the Most High, but they do not trust in Him.

So it is good news theologically. But for those who are being saved, those who have received the seed of the Gospel through the preached Word of Christ, and who through hearing have faith, it is not just news, though it is. It is not just good news, though it is. It is the good news.

For those of us who receive it as the good news, it is not just history. It is not just theology. It is Gospel. It is redemption. It is deliverance.

Resting in Christ

This is what faith is. It is by faith alone that we receive all the blessings of Christ. We receive all that He accomplished for us in His active obedience in life, obeying the law of God, and in His passive obedience on the cross, soaking up the wrath of God and the penalty of the law.

Then in His resurrection, we see the verification and justification of sinners who, through faith, receive all the benefits and blessings of reconciliation with God, adoption by God, and all the rights and privileges of being adopted sons of God.

Faith is when we trust in that. It is when we rest in that. The old Reformers used to call it a hearty rest. It is a glad-hearted contentment, being at rest and at peace in God. That is faith: knowledge, assent, and trust.

We individually must lay hold of this Gospel. Or, to be more accurate, this Gospel must lay hold of us individually. We are not saved through associations, through a collective, or through a community. We are saved and justified as individuals before God.

And each of us individually confesses:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, and was raised on the third day.

We confess these things as individuals, and that is important. This is what it means to become a disciple of Christ: to become a student of Christ who knows what he believes and why he believes it.

God bless you. Have a great week.

Thanks.

A Place to Belong in Christ

Outlined Transcript:

Hi folks,

I just wanted to give you a short video based on one of my little lectures at the Bible conference we just had. I know I’ve shot a few other videos for you, but I wanted to give you a little more feedback.

It went so well, better than I expected. I really didn’t know what to expect.

The Need for Simple, Clear Bible Teaching

These people are not strong readers. I would say most of them didn’t even come with their Lahu Bibles because they don’t understand them well. Even my interpreter didn’t bring his Lahu Bible.

He speaks very good English and has studied. He did his MDiv in London many years ago, so he is basically fluent. But he told me he doesn’t even travel with his Lahu Bible because it is not a great translation. He was looking for a Bible left over in the church that he could use while interpreting.

All that to say, these people are not strong readers. They are farmers. They are out in the fields most days and most weekends. When they come home, it is dark. They are trying to save power. Many of them are sitting around by firelight. They squat on the ground and cook around a little campfire inside their house.

They could sit at home and read during the day, but they are out working all day long.

So those audio Bibles, the little devices I talked about a few months ago, were a big hit. We have already given them all away, and we are going to need more. I don’t know the exact number yet. I know I mentioned that in a previous video, and I will keep you posted on it.

Teaching Through “Sticky Concepts”

For this video, I just wanted to briefly share how I taught and what they found so helpful.

My interpreter said I was by far the easiest person he has ever had to interpret for. That is probably because I have been doing this for over 20 years, speaking through interpreters. I teach English, and I have two degrees in TESOL, so I know how to make sentences short for non-native English speakers and for people in other languages.

I have also studied several languages, so I have learned to think in short, punctuated sentences.

One thing I do that they found really helpful, and that my interpreter found helpful as well, is that I don’t tell long stories.

I don’t find that the “storying” approach is actually that helpful for most cultures. There is a large ministry movement toward telling stories to communicate the Bible message, and I think the sentiment and desire behind that is noble. But when you actually get to know the target audience of those methods, many of them do not sit around telling elaborate stories.

Maybe they tell short, 30-second anecdotes about something, but they do not tell long, theatrical stories that require sustained attention to a plot. They do not generally think that way.

They actually think more in terms of metaphors, analogies, and short anecdotes.

So I use a lot of little life metaphors, what I call “sticky concepts.” These are concepts that attach to the concrete world and to common human experiences, things most people have experienced or can easily understand.

For example, the panic you feel when a baby cries at night and just keeps crying. Or seeing the loveliness of a sunset. Or the anticipation of a sunrise. Or, if you are from the north, the hope that comes when the snow melts in the springtime.

Those are sticky concepts. They are experiences that most people are aware of, or at least can easily conceptualize even if they have not experienced them personally.

The Centrality of the Local Church

My last group of lectures was on the centrality of church life for the Christian. I was teaching that church life is non-negotiable. A Christian who is not regularly part of a local congregation is, in a sense, a paradox. It is almost a contradiction in terms.

A true Christian is part of a church. You cannot be a maverick, lone-wolf Christian.

One metaphor I used that was helpful for them was the idea that being part of a local church is not simply a matter of attendance. It is not like going to school and trying not to be late or trying not to get too many demerits for missing too many days.

I tried to encourage them that church is not like that.

It is much more like a family.

It is the place where you belong. It is where you feel at home. It is the people you want to be with.

The Church as a Family

And with any family, there are always a few people who are a little unusual. We all have oddities in our personalities. In a family gathering, there are always going to be a few people who rub someone the wrong way or who do not naturally connect.

In our remote-working society, we often think of friends and connections in terms of interest groups or affinity groups. We spend time with people who are into soccer, basketball, pizza, certain movies, or whatever else we enjoy.

But that is not how family works.

Family members often have very different interests, sometimes even bizarre interests. We are all distinct. But we still have one thing in common: we belong together.

We are a unit. We are related. There is nothing we can do about that.

The idea of the church is similar. The local church is a congregation of the righteous, a local assembly of people who belong to one another because they belong to Christ.

Ultimately, we belong to Christ. And because we are in Christ, we are united to one another.

We are not united because we have the same interests. We are not united because we all love the same cultural preferences or activities. We are united in Christ. He is the point of our unity.

It is that simple: we belong together because we belong to Christ.

There is an identity to that local, particular people gathered together in that assembly.

A Bowl of Rice with Family

One of the analogies I used was from my own life. They all know I am a missionary. They know I am a professor. I think some of them understand that I raise support as part of my income. All of you are aware of that as well.

When I am raising support, very kind-hearted pastors or supporters will sometimes take me to a really nice restaurant. They will say, “You are back in the States,” or, “You are only visiting for a short time. What kind of food do you miss?”

And often, to be honest, I just miss steak.

That is one thing we cannot get here very easily or cheaply. I miss good red meat, a good American steak. I can get pizza here. I can even get good burgers here. But steak is one thing I really enjoy when I am back in the United States.

But here is the thing.

As much as I enjoy a really good American steak at a nice restaurant, and as nice and clean and enjoyable as that is, I would still rather be with my family with just a bowl of rice, a cup of water, and a banana, even when the electricity is not working.

Because when I am on the road meeting with people, as much as I love the food and the fellowship, I belong to my family.

That is where I belong.

Even if we are living in near-poverty conditions, I would not trade that for a thousand nice meals. I feel like a king when I am with my family, because that is my place of belonging.

That is what the local church is like.

Belonging Together in Christ

You can shop around at various churches. You can go to conferences. These people are not really doing that, of course. They are farmers. They do not travel much. Going to town once a month to pay a bill or take care of something necessary is a big trip for many of them.

But they can still understand the idea of having mobility, of being able to get around and do many different things.

And there is a rootedness to family that keeps bringing people back. It is one of the longings of the soul. We all want a place to belong.

That is what church is.

Church is belonging together in Christ.

I went through many of the “one another” verses in the New Testament, and that was one of the teaching points they found especially helpful.

That is just one example of the kind of point and anecdote I used, what I call a sticky concept.

Looking Ahead

As the months go on, I will be doing this again. They really want to have another conference next year. They only have a certain window of time in the farming season when they can actually take a weekend off to do something like this.

But I think there were about 100 people who showed up. People came from other villages as well. Next time, we may have to do it outside because we do not have a big enough place. They have a way to put up a large net or tent, and my guess is that there may be double the number of people next time.

People are starving for simple Bible teaching that makes sense.

They are somewhat like the God-fearers in the New Testament book of Acts. They have a sense that Christianity is real, right, true, and good. They just do not have all the pieces put together yet.

They are kind of like the Ethiopian eunuch.

My aim and desire is to make plain the good, true, and beautiful things of God’s Word, and to make clear and explicit the simplicity and freeness of the grace of God in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for praying for us.

God bless you.

How to Teach Law and Gospel Through Romans: Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude

How to Teach Law and Gospel Through Romans: Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude

Outlined transcript:

I wanted to follow up on previous videos on how to teach the Word, the law, and the gospel. I talked about training up younger Christians using the law and how to teach it in a way that sticks—using the Ten Commandments as a mirror that reflects our sin and shows our need for a savior.

The Three Uses of the Law

• The Mirror: It reflects upon our sin and it shows us our need for a savior.

• The Messiah: The second use of the law is to point us to Christ as our Messiah. It shows us our need for our savior, our Messiah.

• The Manual: The third use of the law is that it shows us how to walk in a way that is worthy of our Messiah.

Jesus is the custodian of the law of God and the grace of God. He redeems us as our Messiah, and then the law serves as a manual—a way to walk that is pleasing to Christ. I will be teaching this in the Fundamentals of the Faith seminar at the end of April.

Redemptive Indicatives and Moral Imperatives

It is helpful to show how redemptive indicatives typically front-load moral imperatives. For example, the book of Ephesians is largely about the doctrine of Christ, the grace of God, soteriology, and the doctrine of the church. The minority section at the end contains the imperatives—the duties we must do in light of the glories of the gospel and the spiritual blessings God has secured for us in Christ.

Most of Paul's writings are like that. As a good scribe and Pharisee, he was very well trained in the scribal traditions. He does similar things to what you see in the book of Proverbs, which discusses the goodness of the Word and the blessings for those who keep it, followed by actual examples of what wise living under the fear of the Lord looks like. Paul takes the scribal tradition and uses it as the Holy Spirit inspires the text through him.

The Structure of Romans: Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude

The book of Romans is built deep like the roots of a tree before it sprouts. It focuses on the doctrine of Christ, soteriology, and the grace of God. You can break the book of Romans into three helpful categories:

1. Guilt (Humanity's Need): Romans 1 to 3:20 shows that all are guilty before God.

2. Grace (God’s Provision): Romans 3:21 to 11:36 shifts to grace. God justifies sinners by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone, according to Scripture alone.

3. Gratitude (The Obedience of Faith): Romans 12:1 to 16:27 focuses on the obedience of faith.

While Romans is often used for evangelism, it was a missionary support letter written to encourage believers in Rome. It should be called the gospel according to Paul because it is his exposition of gospel doctrine as he learned it from Jesus himself.

The Turning Point: Romans 12

Chapter 12 is the turning point in the whole book. Paul says, "therefore, by the mercies of God," referring to the black backdrop of guilt in chapters 1 to 3:20 and the glories of the grace of God from 3:21 through the end of chapter 11. In light of these amazing mercies, we are called to:

• Present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

• Do not be conformed to this world.

• Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

When we have filled our minds with the glories of the grace of God, living in a manner worthy of the gospel becomes our natural service of worship and our most reasonable response. Romans 12-16 then deals with the nitty-gritty of church life: how to love one another, show hospitality, and use our gifts in proportion to grace.

Conclusion

The burden of the Bible is not just to get us to behave better; it is deeply grounded in the indicatives of the goodness of God in saving sinners. We make disciples by pointing them first to the blessings of God. As Romans 2 says, it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance.

Faith is the ground of our faithfulness. Faith must precede faithfulness; Jesus’ obedience is the condition for our faith, which then results in faithfulness as the consequence. If you get those two things right, you do not conflate or flatten the imperatives and indicatives.

How Do We Explain the Love of God?

How Do We Explain the Love of God?

Outline Transcript:

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to give you a quick video for Good Friday and Easter.

A little more than six years ago, before COVID was breaking out, I was in another country where our seminary, ABTS, has a site, and I was teaching a class. My students raised their hands and said, “Could you explain to us the love of God?” I had just been talking about the grace of God and the love of God.

They said, “In our language, in our Bible translation, when you say, ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,’ we know it must mean something more than what our version translates. The closest thing to love that we have is something like indulging or spoiling. We know that’s probably not what it means, but we don’t have a really good word to use for love. Could you explain the love of God for us?”

So I had to slow down my lectures, and I basically scrapped most of the rest of that day and part of the next day. I turned their attention to Romans 5.

That’s actually where I was teaching my students again a few weeks ago, this time in Thailand. In that class, I had students from Korea, China, Thailand, the Philippines, America, Bangladesh, India, and maybe another country or two. Again, we were in Romans 5, talking through the grace and the love of God.

I want to share a little bit from Romans 5 with you and show you how I taught the passage. This was a two-hour lecture, and I’m going to try to do it in about ten minutes, so I’m just going to give you a few highlights.

One of the things I wanted to communicate was that, of course, I was doing this in simple English. I can’t do it in Chinese or Thai, and I don’t know the languages of some of the other students, like Korean or Indonesian. So you have to do it in very simple terms and easy sentence structures.

But the fact is, a lot of these students are better grammar students in English than many of us who are native English speakers, because they’ve had to study grammar in order to become proficient enough to be seminary students. So I know they understand grammar to some extent.

Romans 5 and the Grammar of the Gospel

I’ve got my ESV here, and I’m just going to read through a portion of the first eight verses of Romans 5 and make a few simple comments and observations.

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I wanted to communicate to them that the intricacies, the texture, of gospel news and gospel proclamation are often found in the verbs and even in the prepositions. A lot of times, if you’ve ever studied Greek or really done anything with grammar in general, the base meaning is in the verbs, and then the sentence builds out around them. That’s true in Greek here.

“Have been justified” is a truth statement. It’s not a command. It’s not a question. It is something that has been done. It refers to something that happened in the past, a decisive event with ongoing consequences.

And it’s in the passive voice. It doesn’t say we have justified ourselves. No, it says we have been justified. So it is something done to us, outside of us, external to us, independent of us. God Himself did this to us.

Then you have the next phrase: “we have peace with God.” That is present tense. It is ongoing. It is not just a comment of potentiality. It is a comment of surety, of assurance. We have peace with God.

In the class, the question came up: “What if we don’t have peace with God? How do we know what kind of decisions to make? What do we need to do to get peace with God again?”

The point I was making was this: even when we do sin and step out of fellowship with the Lord, which we are going to do every day, since we have been justified by faith in the past, something done to us with ongoing and unbreakable consequences, we have peace with God. It cannot be broken.

And we have it through faith in Christ, in union with Christ, through the instrument of faith.

A lot of people work toward assurance by trying to do better or be good enough to impress God, please God, or make God happy with them so that they can enjoy some inner sense of peace. But this text blows that out of the water, because it points to a decisive event that has been enacted upon us in the past, and that event produces, ensures, and secures peace with God.

God Shows His Love for Us

Let me skip down to verse 8. Maybe in another setting I’ll go through this passage more slowly, but for this video, and just to encourage you, listen to verse 8:

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

The NASB says:

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Truly, the question of assurance is at the heart of the Reformation. The Reformation wasn’t just recovering the centrality of Scripture, though it was that. It wasn’t just recovering the centrality of the doctrine of faith alone, sola fide, though it was that too. At the heart of the Reformation was the question: How do I know I’m right with God?

That is a question of assurance.

And when you ask that question, you have to ask questions of source and authority. How do you know that? What is your source? Where did you get it from?

The Reformation went back to the Scriptures, back to the sources, and found there that our assurance is in the objective love of God for us.

So if you are struggling, trying to do enough for God so that you can experience God’s love for you, that is a fool’s errand. You can never do enough for God in order to receive the love of God, because God has done it for you.

We were condemned and corrupt in Adam. We were both unable and unwilling to come to God. But God demonstrates, God shows, His love.

So if you want to know today how God loves you, look to the cross. Look to the historical record of what Christ has done for us, and what was verified three days later in the resurrection. God’s love is demonstrated today by remembering the historical event of the gospel with all its theological truths and implications.

That is God’s love for us today. That is what He shows us today.

His Own Love Toward Us

Notice that Paul says, in the NASB, “His own love.” That’s significant. It’s not abstract. It’s not just some abstract virtue that God happens to be good at. It is His own love. It comes from who He is.

And then notice the prepositions.

The ESV says “for us.” The NASB says “toward us.” It is a preposition of relation. It can also be translated “in regard to” or “on behalf of.” It is particular.

Think of it this way: an athlete might show his greatness by scoring touchdowns or making baskets in a championship game. He is displaying greatness for people to see. But that is not what this text means. It is not saying that God is merely putting love on display so that we can observe it from a distance.

There is a purpose to His love, a goal to His love, and it is directed toward people.

God is glorified, and God loves to save bad people.

There is an intentionality to the love of God. You can see it in the words “for” and “toward.” So God demonstrates His love for you in that while you were still sinning, Christ died for you.

That is the demonstration not only of God’s love, but of His particular redemption, His specific love for you. Christ died for bad people.

It was not just to create a potential that sinners might come to Him someday. There was an intentionality, not merely a potentiality, in the love of God for each of you who have received the grace of God through faith in Christ by His blood.

Encouragement for Easter Week

So this Easter week, be encouraged.

Today, not just on Good Friday, but even today, and next week, and the week after, and in the years to come, God shows His love for you in that while you were dead in sins and trespasses, while you were condemned in Adam, corrupt by Adam’s nature, unable and unwilling to come to God as one of His enemies, God reconciled you to Himself.

God stepped down. He condescended and reached for you out of the grave. He made one of His rebellious enemies an adopted son who now has the privilege of sitting at the table with the King and enjoying His presence forever.

And God did this for you.

That is why Paul can say in Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

It is not only that God is with us, though that is true. He is Emmanuel. But there is a particularity, an intentionality, to God’s love for us in the cross and in the resurrection.

And He loves you.

He loves you so much, and He shows you that love every day by reminding you of the cross, of what Christ did on that cross, and of what Christ did in the resurrection. He pours His love out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

God bless you, and have a great, worshipful Resurrection Sunday.

A Simple Way to Teach the Ten Commandments

Walking Through the Ten Commandments for Christian Discipleship

Outlined Transcript:

Hi everyone,

I wanted to follow up on the little series we’ve been on. A few weeks ago, we talked about keeping the law of the Lord, keeping all that Christ has commanded, and guarding it. Then we talked about reminding people of what God has said and what God has done, the Word and the works of God, from Deuteronomy: don’t forget, take care that you remember.

Then we talked about discipling through frequent, constant, intentional, multisensory ways of reminding, especially younger children and young believers, of the Word and the works of God, and using creation, the book of creation, as a way to highlight and depict the truths of the book of God’s revelation, His special revelation.

Today, I’m going to demonstrate how I walk through the Ten Commandments, the simple Ten Commandments.

Looking Ahead

In late April, I’ll be doing the conference for the Lahu Church, and we’ll be doing it on the fundamentals of the faith, the Christian faith and Christian living, and how those two things work together.

I’m going to go through the law in a way that teaches both how it wounds the conscience and points us to Christ, so the first and second uses of the law, and then how it instructs us to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel, in a manner that imitates Christ, so the third use of the law.

The Preface to the Ten Commandments

First of all, the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 have a preface. A lot of people don’t even notice that.

If they talk about the Ten Commandments, which in today’s day can seem old-fashioned, it’s almost treated as if that’s just fundamental. Sometimes people even go so far as to say, “We’re just New Testament Christians. The Old Testament is really for the Jews, but the New Testament is for Christians.”

It couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The Old Testament is a book for Christians. Peter talks about how the Scriptures were written for us, meaning New Testament believers. The believers of the Old Testament didn’t have all that we now have in Christ. It was still in mystery. They didn’t have all of the truths that we now have in union with Christ because of the Holy Spirit.

They didn’t have all of that information about the time and the person that the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating through His sufferings and subsequent glories, as Peter talks about. They were writing, knowing that it wasn’t mainly for them. They were writing for a future audience, a future generation.

So the original audience would have been the Hebrews, and we have to understand, as best we can, the historical and cultural context to understand that original audience. But the intended audience, according to Peter, is New Testament believers, those who now have the indwelling of the Spirit, who now have the mind of Christ.

We now have the mind of Christ. We can understand the mysteries of the Old Testament because they are now revealed in Christ. All the promises of God in the Old Testament are yes and amen in Jesus Christ.

Reading the Law Christianly

When we go to the law, the Decalogue, as it’s been called, the Ten Commandments, how do we understand those Christianly?

Not too much different than they should have understood them in the Old Testament. But now that we have Christ, we can read them through the lens of the Word and work of God in the person of Christ.

The preface, the verses preceding the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, is in chapter 20, verse 2:

“I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

That’s the KJV I’m using here.

It’s just indicative. God is telling the truth about who He is and the truth about what He has done.

I am the Lord your God. I am Adonai, your God. I have brought you out of the land of Egypt. I have redeemed you from Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You were in bondage. You were slaves. And I redeemed you. I ransomed you. I am Adonai, your Elohim. I am the Lord, your God.

So that’s the preface. This is the redemptive indicative. This is what you have to have in the backdrop of your mind as you go into the Decalogue, into the Ten Commandments, and want to learn a way to walk that is worthy of this redemptive truth.

So what does the preface teach us?

The preface of the Ten Commandments teaches us that because God is the Lord, and our God, our Redeemer, therefore we ought to keep all His commandments.

A Simple Way to Teach the Ten Commandments

How do I do this?

I learned this mnemonic device, this way of teaching, from my friend John Miller. So this is not original to me, but I’ve adapted it. Of course, I have to do it a little differently in a different language. This works in English, and it can work in other languages too. You just have to be more creative in some of the ways you remember these things.

There are ten commandments, and this is an easy way to do it with adults or children.

1. One God

There is one God. We shall have no other gods before Him.

2. No idols

We shall not make idols and bow down to idols. So you kind of do your bowing motion with your fingers.

3. Watch your words

Do not take the Lord’s name in vain. Watch your words.

4. Keep the Sabbath holy

You shall keep the Sabbath and hold the Sabbath and keep it holy. It’s like four people in a family, or four tires on a car, going to church or going to worship.

5. Honor your parents

Honor your parents, because if you don’t, your parents will exact the right hand of discipline.

6. Do not murder

You shall not murder. Don’t kill anybody. Stop murdering.

7. Do not commit adultery

You shall not commit adultery, like two people going into a secret place together, into a building or a house or a room.

8. Do not steal

You shall not steal. In some countries, you lose your thumbs if you steal.

9. Do not bear false witness

You shall not bear false witness, or you shall not lie. In some countries, if you lose both thumbs, it would be a lie to say you grew your thumb back. That doesn’t happen. Do not bear false witness. Don’t lie about growing the thumb back.

10. Do not covet

You shall not covet. You shall not want what your neighbor has. You shall not desire and covet what is not yours.

Final Thoughts

That’s just an easy way to walk through the Ten Commandments. I thought I’d share that with you.

Like I said, I have to adapt that in different languages with different kinds of mnemonic devices. But in English, I find that to be a really helpful way.

In a future video, I’ll talk more about how to pass on the law as it convicts, the law as it comforts, and then the law as it instructs us in Christ.

Thank you.

Remember and Teach: Deuteronomy’s Pattern for Discipleship

Remember and Teach: Deuteronomy's Pattern for Discipleship

Hi everyone. Picking up where we left off last time: last time we talked about how the book of Deuteronomy was the holiest book in the Torah, and the Torah is the holiest book in the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Scriptures. And in the Hebrew mind, Deuteronomy was where they highlighted and valued learning about the ways and the word of God most. That was kind of their go-to book in discipleship, in spiritual life.

The "Go-To" Place for Spiritual Life

So the Torah, the Pentateuch, was their go-to place, and within that, Deuteronomy was their most special place. And one thing about the book of Deuteronomy is, like I said, it highlights that we need to remember and not forget what God has said, what God has done, the word and the works of God.

Deuteronomy 6 and Deuteronomy 11 command the Israelites to remind and teach the younger generations who had not witnessed what God had done for Israel. And as we saw in the last video, it was the generation that saw all that God had done and saw the victories through Joshua—it was that generation that failed to disciple, to train up, to teach, and pass on what God had said and what God had done. And they explicitly failed to keep what God had told them to do in Deuteronomy 6 and 11, specifically 6:20 and 11:2.

God’s ways were to be wholly embraced and diligently passed on to the rising generations. And you see this in Deuteronomy 6:6–7 and 11:18–19. It’s not just a passive outsourcing to the priests or the religious leaders of Israel, or the Hebrews at the time. There is an expectation that the parents, particularly the dads, the fathers, were to disciple, to diligently pass on the word and the works of God to the next generation.

To Teach Diligently: Whet and Sharpen

The Hebrew word for “teach diligently” means to whet or sharpen, as though to sharpen a sword. It suggests a deep impression upon the learner. There are three different applications of that Hebrew word, “teach diligently.”

1. It is Intentional

And one application, or one implication, is that it’s intentional. It’s not, like I said, passive. It’s not just something you once in a while do when the questions arise. It’s not just, “If they have a religious question, or they’re confused about something, I’ll do my best to answer it,” or, “Maybe I’ll tell them to talk to the priest.” No, it’s planning ahead. It’s intentional.

And this is one key thing about discipleship—not just discipleship of children, but discipleship of anybody. It’s not just doing life together. It’s not just having Christian-centered gatherings. It’s actually an intentional plan to go through content, to talk about, to teach, to instruct, to even proclaim the indicatives and then imperatives that God has given us in Scripture. And it’s content-oriented. It’s not just an accountability group. It’s something where you have a plan to go through a text together or to go through a doctrine together.

So a failure to plan in discipleship is a plan to fail. You have to have some sort of intentionality in meeting with people. And it doesn’t have to be cold and rigid and policy-driven. You don’t have to get through a certain outline every time, but have a goal in mind of where you’re going to go or what you’re going to get through.

2. It is Multi-Sensory

So it’s not just intentional, but it’s also what J.I. Packer calls multi-sensory. And where he gets this is this idea of when you rise, or when you go on the way, or when you are walking, or sitting down to eat—teach these things, or talk about these things. It’s just this idea that, as you go through your day, look for opportunities to impress upon your disciples, or your children in this context, the truths of God.

You know, like Psalm 121, one of my favorite psalms, says:

“I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord will not let the sun strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil.”

And so it’s just this idea that, as you’re walking down the road, or out in the field, or whatever, and you just glance at the mountains, think about the righteousness and the stability and the enduring grace of God from generation to generation, the immovable love of God, the steadfast love of God for his people, and how the mountains of God remind us that he is our maker, the maker of those mountains, and that God will help us, that God will watch over us, and that he will not be moved.

As in Malachi, it says, “The Lord God does not change; therefore we are not consumed,” because God is immutable, because God is unchangeable, because God does not move. There is no shifting shadow in God. He doesn’t turn his back on his people. God will never, never, never abandon those who are his. He will never lose any of his children, his chosen, because he is immovable, like a mountain. We can sleep in peace. We can go about our days with a peacefulness, knowing that God is for us—not just with us, but for us. What can man do to us? Who can be against us? Because God is for us.

And so, to use this intentionality, to look intentionally for ways to point people’s eyes to Christ, to point them to the word and the work of God, and to use multi-sensory opportunities—mountains. Jesus even commends it: “Consider the lilies of the field. Consider the birds of the air.” The lilies of the field are dressed in more splendor than Solomon ever was. Consider the birds of the air. They don’t worry about where their food is coming from. How much more does your heavenly Father love you? You will be fed, and you will be cared for.

And so, using multi-sensory opportunities, the little reminders through the day—what I call sticky concepts—those little analogies or metaphors in creation that can stick to the mind, that remind us of something God has said in Scripture. Not new revelation, just general revelation serving special revelation. It’s the revelation of creation, the book of creation, serving the book of revelation, God’s word—highlighting, illuminating, coloring, depicting truths from God’s word.

3. It is Constant

And then J.I. Packer also talks about the discipleship commands of Deuteronomy. So they’re intentional, they’re multi-sensory, and then the third thing is that they’re constant. It’s not occasional. It’s a constant job. Now, not in the dreary, bland, tedious, dutiful sense, but it’s a privilege. It’s a constant privilege to be pointing our children, or the spiritual children under our care—maybe we don’t have children in our house anymore, maybe we don’t have children in general, but God has entrusted to us a few younger Christians, Christians who are young in the faith—it’s our privilege to constantly be pointing them to the goodness of God and to the word of God and the imperatives of Scripture as they fall on the heels of the indicatives of redemption.

So this intentionality—you have to plan. You have to think ahead. And this opportunity to look at the book of creation and how it serves and highlights and demonstrates the book of revelation. And then it’s constant. It’s something that you’re frequently doing. Maybe not every time, but certainly you’re looking for opportunities every day. Maybe not every hour—it’s just too hard sometimes, depending on your life context—but it’s something that is a frequent, regular rhythm of your life in pouring into the people entrusted to your care.

Torah: The Fatherly Duty of Instruction

So this is why the most often given command in Deuteronomy is don’t forget, or remember. They’re synonymous commands. They’re not the exact same commands, but they’re synonymous, implying that you need to endure and have recollection of those things that God has passed on.

The Hebrew word Torah means instruction, teaching, direction, guidance for knowing the way. And from the same Hebrew root word that gives us the word Torah, you also get words from the same root for teacher, parent, and teaching. Teacher, parent, and teaching. So you get kind of the flavor of how that root word influenced these other words connected to Torah, to the teaching of God. It’s a fatherly duty to pass on the instruction.

And we know from Ephesians that it says, “Fathers, stop provoking your children.” In a lot of English translations, it says, “Don’t provoke your children to frustration.” But actually the verb tense is in the negative, so “stop” or “don’t,” and it’s a participle, or ongoing tense: be provoking. So the implication is, dads, you are provoking your children. Just by your authority, or by your lack of sanctification in some way, you’re overdoing it. You’re overstating the case. You are provoking your children somewhere to frustration. Stop doing it.

It’s just to be assumed that the father-child relationship is one in which dads are going to sin repeatedly, normally, in provoking their children. So stop doing it. And then it gives the burden of instruction to the fathers: raise your children up in the instruction of the Lord. It doesn’t say mothers, and it doesn’t say parents. It says fathers. It doesn’t mean the fathers don’t work with the mothers. It doesn’t mean the fathers don’t partner with the mothers. It’s just that they don’t outsource to the mothers. It is the father’s job, as the head of the household, to raise up and disciple children in the instruction of the Lord.

And this is why discipleship in the church is a manly responsibility. It is primarily entrusted to the elders to train others underneath them who can train others. Second Timothy 2 talks about how it is a job to pass on the instruction to competent teachers. And it is the father’s job in the home, and the father’s job in the church, to ensure that the rising generation of young believers are well discipled, are taught to keep all that Christ has commanded.

Now, of course, they work with all people in the church. We should all be making disciples at some point, in some way. But the responsibility of oversight falls on the shoulders of the fathers—the spiritual fathers and the family fathers.

Discipleship Is Remembering: Teach the Next Generation to Hold Fast

Discipleship Is Remembering: Teach the Next Generation to Hold Fast

Outlined Transcript:

Hi everyone. I wanted to keep going on the series on discipleship and want to unpack what I do with people in the villages. Even at the conference in April, what I'll probably be doing is teaching very fundamental truths of the Word of God—both the law and the gospel.

Beyond Content: Teaching to "Keep"

Last time we talked about how discipleship is teaching people to keep all that Christ commanded, not just to teach what Christ commanded. We're not just teaching the content, though that is important. And truly, it's not just what came out of Jesus's mouth, but it's the totality of the Word of God. It's the whole counsel, the full counsel of the Word of God because we know that it is the Spirit of Christ who inspired the sacred writings. It is the Spirit of Christ who carried along the prophets and the writers of old who inscribed the God-breathed Word.

And so it's not just the Gospels we're talking about. It's the totality of all that Jesus taught through His Spirit in the text. Because we know that God spoke in many ways and many places and many times through prophets who are carried along by the Spirit of Christ. But today He speaks to us through His Son. So anytime the Word of God is open, Jesus is speaking. So faith comes through hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ.

To Guard and Protect

And so, teaching people not just the content but to do something with it, and that is to keep, to guard, to protect. And so, like I said, in some versions it says to teach to "observe" and I don't prefer that English word. I think it gets at the point of the word better than "obey." Obey typically implies something you do and to follow after or to emulate a command.

But there's more to the Bible than just imperatives. The Bible's full of indicatives. In fact, most of the Bible is indicatives. And where there are imperatives, they're always following after redemptive indicatives—truths of what God has said and what God has done: the Word and the works of God.

Our walking worthy of the gospel always comes on the back end of:

• Lots of gospel doctrine.

• Lots of Christological doctrine.

• Lots of theological doctrine about the attributes and the nature of God and the goodness of God.

• The works of Christ: His obedience, His death, and His resurrection.

How do we teach people to keep or to guard what God has commanded, what Christ has explicated, what He has illuminated through His teachings and how He has given us the keys to understanding the promises in the Old Testament and the law in the Old Testament? How those make sense only in the person of Christ through His life, His obedience, His death and His resurrection and now His ascension and someday His return in glory.

The Lesson of Judges

I want to kind of flesh out how I do this. Just briefly, the verse in Judges that everybody quotes is that "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everybody did what is right in his own eyes.” That's typically used as the key verse, the hermeneutical key for unlocking the narrative thrust and emphasis of the book of Judges.

But I think there's actually a verse that is more significant. It's more contextually significant than that one only because it makes sense of that one. This verse gives you a clue as to why that happened. It's towards the very beginning of the book of Judges, in Judges 2:10-12:

"And there arose another generation after them... who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals and they abandoned the Lord the God of their fathers who had brought them out of Egypt."

"Them" refers to the generation that followed Joshua, that crossed through the Jordan into the Promised Land, who saw and participated in all the conquests of Joshua. Some of them had even known Moses. The children of those who were victorious failed to pass on the faith to their own children.

Of course, the children are guilty for their own disobedience, but their parents are also likewise guilty for not passing on the faith to their kids—not teaching them to keep or to guard all that God had commanded them in the law; all that God had promised in the grace through Moses; and the work of God through Joshua. They failed to teach the children to keep, to guard, to hold on to, and to remember.

The Priority of Deuteronomy: "Remember"

One thing that is interesting in the book of Deuteronomy: in the Hebrew mind, the Torah is the "holy place," but the book of Deuteronomy is like the "Holy of Holies." It is the most sacred book of all of the Tanakh.

If you look at the book of Deuteronomy, the most often given commands are synonymous:

1. You shall remember.

2. You shall take care and not forget what God has spoken.

That is the burden of the Holy Spirit for the people of God. At this point in the Torah, you don't need another word. What has been given to you in the promises and in the law—the law of Moses, the promises through Abraham—this is enough. You don't need new words. For that generation, it was sufficient just to remember; to remind each other of what God has done.

Our Job as Disciples

That really is a picture of discipleship: teaching people to remember, to take heed lest they forget what God has done and think that all the blessings God has given them were done by their own hand, and fall away from trusting in the living God.

As Hebrews 3 talks about, we must encourage one another every day, as long as it is still called "today," lest we, or our brother, or ourselves fall into the deceitfulness of sin. We must remind each other with the words of God—what God has spoken and what God has done—lest we be like those who did evil and abandoned the Lord who redeemed us out of slavery to sin.

We must take care to teach the rising generation to heed, to keep, to guard, to protect, and to defend the truth that God has passed on to us. It is our job to teach the next generation to tereo—to hold on to, to hold fast to the Word of God.

Discipleship as Guarding the Truth

Discipleship as Guarding the Truth

Outlined Transcript:

Reaching the Oral Learner

Hi folks. I just wanted to share with you some things that I've been teaching in my classes recently. I was a couple weeks ago teaching a class called intercultural discipleship. And in that class I was unpacking the practice of discipleship for people who aren't strong readers. We call them illiterate people. They're not illiterate. It doesn't mean they can't read. It just means they don't read naturally or by habit. They don't take in content through reading typically. Usually it's through talking and song and memory and various other things which is one reason why around Christmas time I was asking for donations to buy the audio Bibles.

I wanted to show you—I got a bunch of them ordered and they came about a week or two ago and I've not charged them all, but this is what they look like. I think I showed you on a previous video what they look like. They're very simple. I didn't want something that was overly complex with lots of moving features on it. Sometimes the more simple they are, the less there is to damage or to malfunction. And so they have Thai and Black Lahu recorded on them.

Ministry Through Felt Needs

I have a plan to distribute them at our conference that we're going to hold, Lord willing, later this spring. It's going to be a Christian family and marriage conference for people in the church, people in the village. It's using the topic of marriage and family, which are sometimes taboo topics, things that people don't talk about much because there's just not much to talk about because they don't usually address their own problems. They don't talk about ways to improve or grow. They just kind of stuff it down and sweep it under the rug. And they don't really address glaring issues. And so they just kind of ignore them and then they percolate over time and it just sometimes it blows up or it's just a festering issue that's always there.

And so using the felt needs of a need for wholeness and health within the family and using that as a way to teach how a Christian family ought to work, how a Christian family ought to be strengthened. And so using this opportunity as a way to do what I called in my class that I was referring to earlier as pre-discipleship or pre-evangelism.

"Essentially influencing people to Christ with the word of Christ in the way of Christ by the spirit of Christ."

And so in the way of Christ, the manner both in his tenderness, but also in his toughness, in his kindness, but also in his strength and speaking strong words, but speaking words that are lifegiving and peace giving. Not laying on people a yoke that is man-made, a yoke that is lawful, but giving people a light yoke, a helpful yoke, a yoke that is garlanded in grace, the grace of the gospel. But also giving them authoritative words, not just personal reflections, not just personal proverbial sayings, but the words of Christ. And so we know that faith comes through hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

The Great Commission: Unpacking Tereo

My goal is to plant seeds of faith in their soul through the word of Christ by the spirit of Christ. And so that is kind of how I think in terms of both evangelism and discipleship. But first of all just to lay the groundwork of discipleship. Probably the go-to text that all of you are familiar with is from Matthew 28, the Great Commission.

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age."

I was reading from the ESV, which is what I typically use. I'm just going to point out one part of the passage that I really honed in on during my teaching. And it's one of the ways that we make disciples is by teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. But a lot of times the way I hear this part of the passage taught or applied is people will often emphasize it this way: teaching them all that I've commanded you. Well, what's missing? It's the infinitive verb. Teaching them to observe or to keep or some translations to obey.

I'm using the ESV. It says to observe. I don't like that translation. There are others like the NASB I think use to keep and it's much more accurate. But the word is—not to get too technical with you, but it does matter, it does change the way you understand it—is the word: tereo. It means to keep post. It's a military term for guarding a deposit. Paul uses it in his letters to Timothy and says, "I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith. I have tereo-ed the faith. I have guarded the faith." It's the body of doctrine. When he says, "I have kept the faith" with a definite article, he's referring to the body of doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of the gospel.

It's a very specific term and it's actually used in Matthew 27, a chapter earlier; it's the same verb that's used for the guards keeping watch over the tomb before Jesus is raised from the dead. It's the same exact word.

Discipleship Beyond Behavior Management

The idea of discipleship of entrusting the faith to people is not just teaching them what Jesus commanded. It is that, but it's more than that. It's teaching them—the infinitive verb is to keep all that I have commanded. And these aren't just imperatives. When Jesus says all that I have commanded, this is everything he has taught. It's thinking in terms of divine decree, divine edict, all the words of God. He wants them to guard, to keep, to brood over, to preserve all the words that he has decreed—all the indicatives and all the imperatives and all the interrogatives—everything that he has said: keep it, guard it.

Discipleship is more than just helping Christians become better Christians. Discipleship is teaching Christians to know what they believe and why they believe it and how to defend it. It's functionally apologetic work. It's the work of an apologist. It's even the work of a polemicist helping people know how to defend what they believe and why it's real, why it's verifiable, why it's true, but also helping people know how to tear down strongholds and how to use the word of Christ to take down false teaching and to take down false philosophies of the world.

It is essentially getting the Bible into the blood and the DNA of people. And so whether it's through teaching people to read literacy work or teaching people to use audio Bibles, memory work, whatever it is, it's word work and it's ingraining and depositing in people the word of Christ so that they would have faith because faith comes through hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

In future lectures I'll kind of walk through the practicalities of how this is done especially for oral people, but for now this is one of the main things that I was teaching in my latest class. Thanks.

Giving Sense to the Word: Discipling the Next Generation in the Hill Tribes

Giving Sense to the Word: Discipling the Next Generation in the Hill Tribes

Outlined Transcript:

The Dedication of the Hilltribe Mission Center

Recently, we dedicated the Hilltribe Mission Center as a church, the Lahu Church that we are members of. There was a gentleman from the provincial capital who's kind of the overseer, so to speak, of this particular region of Lahu Baptist churches. I've met him before—this is not the first time he came to speak—but he came for the ceremony and he spoke.

One of the things he talked about was an observation about trends within Thailand: how different churches have these plots of land and these small buildings, which is our situation. We have a small little building with lots of land and lots of capacity and space, but not a lot of money. They're still paying off the land. The church building was donated, or money for the church building was donated years and years ago by some Korean businessmen who generously paid for everything to be built, but the church is still in debt to the bank for the land that they're still paying off.

The Need for Discipleship Space

They don't have money for another pastor. They don't have money for a Sunday school building to disciple the kids because there's not enough space in the church building for all the kids. So, they try to teach them outside under the shade of trees and kind of like bamboo lean-tos and pagodas. That's why we built the Hilltribe Mission Center, thanks to many of you who have given to that.

He was making the comment as he was speaking for the ceremony about how these various churches in these hill tribe villages basically don't have any discipleship plan or program for children. They don't have any sort of family discipleship resources, ways to teach the parents to disciple children.

The Challenge of "Functional Orphans"

Part of the problem with that is that a lot of the parents don't live here. Sometimes they do, but maybe one of them, or some other cousin, lives in other countries serving in, working in factories, and making money that way. They send money home and maybe they come home once every five to seven years for only a week at a time.

So, a lot of times the kids are raised by grandparents or uncles or aunts or various other relatives and relations. In some ways, kids can be almost functional orphans because their parents are not here, especially their fathers. It creates this void of gospel teaching that is not passed on to the rising generation.

Preventing a New "Unreached People Group"

The man who was speaking recently was talking about how this Sunday school building or the Hilltribe Mission Center is so strategic for generational discipleship because what will happen is if those kids are not raised to grow up into the church to pass on the faith, in a way they will become their own unreached people group again.

It's not like in the English-speaking world where there's so many systems and there's so many programs and there's even in post-Christian Europe, there's still good churches. There's still actually lots of ministries. There's fewer Christians to be sure, but God still has a pretty vibrant remnant even within post-Christian Europe.

It's not like that here where you don't have generations of Christian legacy to go back to. You don't have hardly anything to retrieve. The process of theological or historical retrieval in this particular region—there's nothing there to retrieve. For some of these language groups, they don't even have a total Bible in their spoken language. That is certainly true of ours; they borrow an adjacent dialect and they kind of get it, but even still they don't really get it. They need somebody to explain it to them.

A Biblical Metaphor: Philip and the Eunuch

I was thinking of one thing I'm going to share with you that's kind of a good metaphor or a good analogy of what I do. It's from Acts 8. You know the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip. I'm just going to read it to you for those of you who may not have familiarized yourself with it in recent months or weeks:

"Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, 'Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.' This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go over and join this chariot.' So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, 'Do you understand what you are reading?' And he said, 'How can I, unless someone guides me?' And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: 'Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.' And the eunuch said to Philip, 'About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?' Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news about Jesus."

The "Slow Slog" of Missions

In a lot of ways, this is kind of like the ministry that God has given me here: there are people who are like the Ethiopian eunuch. They might have a Bible in an adjacent language or maybe even in their own language, but they're not fully literate. They're aliterate. This doesn't mean they're illiterate; they're just not dominant readers. They're slow readers. They're just not well-educated. They're farmers, they're peasants, they're poor people, and they learn through talking.

But we know that God speaks through the Book. And we need an Ezra to give sense to the teaching, or we need a Philip to open the word and to explain what it means. That's a lot of what I do: I try to take the worn-out, sometimes broken tools that they do have and try to work with those in a way that is useful for them, that makes clear the scripture.

There's a lot of people that I work with that are like Nicodemus: they're right up against the kingdom of God and they just need a nudge across the finish line. Or they're like the Ethiopian eunuch and they just need somebody to give a sense, to explain what the text says. And then God gives them understanding. Sometimes they're resistant, of course, and sometimes it categorically or intellectually doesn't make sense, and that's okay. This is why Paul says in 2 Timothy we must teach with all gentleness and patience, and God might grant repentance, God might grant the changing of the mind.

This is the work of the slow slog of missions: just giving sense, being an Ezra giving sense to the text, being a Philip opening it and explaining how it points to Jesus. You can pray for us, pray that we would abound in the work of the Lord, be steadfast, immovable, knowing that in the Lord our labor is not in vain. So, thank you for your prayers and we'll look again at the centrality of the word and discipling people and what that means for generational discipleship in a future video. God bless you.

The Transcultural Gospel: Missions and the Sufficiency of Scripture

The Transcultural Gospel: Missions and the Sufficiency of Scripture

Outlined Transcript:

Hello everyone. I just wanted to pick up where we left off in 2025, talking through the supremacy and the sufficiency of the written word of God in missions. I want to share with you some different meditations, ideas, and teaching topics that I've employed in my recent teachings or that I'm preparing for future classes.

I've got a class coming up in a few weeks on intercultural discipleship: how to make biblical disciples in various cultures without accommodating those cultures or compromising the gospel in order to communicate well. It is about knowing how to rightly teach the word that transcends culture and transforms culture. That is what I call the transcultural gospel.

The Wrecking Ball and the Renovation

The gospel is a servant to cultures in so far that it can be like a wrecking ball in a demolition project. It can flatten the bad parts of culture; it can completely raze them to the ground in those places that are inoperable or irredeemable. As Paul says, "all Cretans are liars." There are certainly some cultures and aspects of various cultures that are so far gone, so far abandoned to God, that they can't be redeemed in the particularities of what they believe. Sometimes they need to be broken down by the law and then by the gospel, and then something new must be created in their place.

But other times, cultures are not so irredeemable. They might actually be closer to the intended revealed will of God as it is seen in creation—the book of creation, the book of the world that God has put within the fabric of what He has created in the conscience of man. The law is written on the heart of all peoples. Some cultures are more approximated towards that plumb line of righteousness.

All cultures are somewhere on that spectrum. They're either so far gone or they're very close.

• Demolition: Sometimes the belief systems need to be flattened and razed to the ground through polemics.

• Renovation: Sometimes they need to be renovated.

If you think of a house, there may be one that is so dilapidated—maybe it was formerly a drug house—that it just needs to be flattened. There's nothing good about it; it needs to be put all the way down to the foundation and then built up again. Then there are houses that are old and maybe dysfunctional in some places, but the bones of the house and the structure are still pretty good. Maybe it needs a new roof, new plumbing, or the carpet needs to be replaced with hardwood floors. They just need to be renovated and upgraded. Sometimes cultures are like that.

The Missionary as Theologian and Linguist

The challenge of being a missionary is knowing how to rightly handle the word of truth so that it is communicated clearly. That is what I try to focus on: the clear communication of the gospel, not the relevant contextualization of the gospel. Though contextualization is important, it is three or four steps down the line.

The main point is that we must start with what the Holy Spirit has been pleased to illuminate throughout the ages: the historic gospel.

• How has that historic gospel communicated well and clearly to other cultures?

• How do we capture the best of church history and the historic faith?

• How do we help people see that they're part of a larger legacy—a package of truth that is not just located in their particular time and place, but is transcendent over all of church history?

This really is the challenge. This is why being a missionary requires that one is simultaneously a theologian and a linguist. You have to be both. You can't just be a cultural aficionado or a theological book nerd. You have to be able to integrate the ability to study the text and to study people to know what God has said that everybody must hear in their own tongue. Then you must be able to say it to them in a way that is convincing, clear, certain, and compelling—and yet still compassionate, knowing they have never heard these categories before.

A Burning Soul for the Word

You don't want to just have a bleeding heart; you also want to have a burning soul. You want to have a soul that is dominated by the word of God. You must see Scripture as the means that God breaks open the hearts of people who are blinded by sin and the dominion of darkness. They need the rays of the light of the kingdom of the Son of God to shine into their heart, and it only comes through the preached gospel from the written word of God.

The famous Sunday school hymn goes like this:

The Bible is the written word of God. It tells about the living word of God. On every page, on every line, you'll find the Son of God divine. If you want to learn to know the King of Kings and you want to learn of all the heavenly things, Read the book. Learn the book and let the book teach you.

This is my heart for what we do in missions. I try to bring the book to people in a way that is compelling, convincing, clear, and compassionate so that they can receive it in a way that is not accommodated or overly contextualized, but is rightly cut.

Rightly Handling the Word

Paul says to Timothy, "Study to show yourself an approved workman unto God, who needs not be ashamed." The question is: how do you study to show yourself an approved workman? The next clause says: "rightly handling" (or rightly cutting) the word of truth.

There is a way to serve God as a workman that can be shameful, that can bring shame upon the ministry. That happens by not rightly handling the word—not rightly dividing it between law and gospel, between grace and God's commands, or between what God has declared in the law and what God has promised in the gospel.

Please pray for us. Pray that our ministry would rightly cut and rightly communicate the word of truth for generations to come. Thank you for your prayers. God bless you.

A Generation Who Knows the Lord: Christmas Reflections from Northern Thailand

A Generation Who Knows the Lord: Christmas Reflections from Northern Thailand

Video Transcript:

Well, Merry Christmas. I’ve just been thinking about so many of you and reflections on this last year, thinking about all the ways you have given and you have prayed for us. There have been times where we've needed lots of prayer and I've communicated to so many of you about lifting us up for various needs and all the generosity of those of you who partner with us.

I wish I could sit down with each one of you whenever I'm back in the US on my short little visits and encourage you and say thank you. I often will when we go out to get a meal or we go to the market to buy food or when I'm buying plane tickets or just paying different fees and expenses that enable us to live here and to serve here.

Probably not a day goes by that I don't think about those of you who partner with us regularly and I wish you could see some of the things that the Lord is using you for to provide for us. Just even today, we're buying a hot water heater for the Hill Tribe Mission Center, things like that. Or we’re going to go to the town on Saturday and buy some fans for the mission center or just buying books for the boys for homeschool or bigger sized jeans or shoes for them. Being able to pay a little bit extra for hot chocolate for them at a nice foreigner restaurant that we could go to once in a while. Little things like that just make a difference for us, so that we can be free to serve the Lord here.

I'm so grateful. Every night at dinner, we pray and thank the Lord for supporters like you who just stand with us faithfully in the gospel, trusting us with the commission and the purpose and the cause of God here in Southeast Asia and Northern Thailand. I am so thankful for you. I just wanted to share a little devotional in light of Christmas.

Last night when our family was having family worship, I just read through the genealogy in Matthew of the Birth of Christ. I was reminded of a quote in my book, Great Commission Spirituality, from an Anglican bishop from the 18th century. His name was Thomas Fuller—not Andrew Fuller, but a different Fuller. He says this about the genealogy of Christ, and I thought it was actually really appropriate as I reflect and wrap up the various teachings of this year and some of my publications. I've thought about how what Fuller says here is really appropriate for the kind of ministry, as the Lord wills, we would like to develop out and build out here in the village.

Regarding the Lord's genealogy, Fuller says this in a prayer: "Lord, I find the genealogy of my savior strangely checkered with four remarkable changes in four immediate generations. First, Rehoboam begat Abijah; that is a bad father begat a bad son. Number two, Abijah begat Asa; that is a bad father begat a good son. And three, Asa begat Jehoshaphat; that is a good father, a good son. And number four, Jehoshaphat begat Jehoram; that is a good father, a bad son." Fuller says this: "I see Lord from hints that my father's piety cannot be entailed," or what he means is cannot be generated to me by hereditary passing on. And he says, "and that is bad news for me." In other words, I'm not going to just automatically inherit my dad's piety. But then he says this: "But I see also that actual impiety is not always hereditary." And then in very tender words, he says, "and that is good news for my son."

I think about the passing on of the faith to the generations and the work we're doing here in the village with so many children who are functionally orphans because their parents work in different factories in Asia and they don't get to come home except maybe for one week every five to seven years. So those kids grow up with grandma and grandpa, kind of doing whatever they want in the village. My wife and I and the boys, we have a real heart for generational discipleship.

In the book of Judges, you're probably familiar with at least what is considered to be the key verse. It says, "and in those days, there was no king in Israel. Everybody did what was right in their own eyes." Well, a lot of people think that's the key verse, but a few verses before that, in Judges 2:10-12, there's this passage which really sets up the transition from Joshua to Judges and sets up the whole plot and conflict of the book. It says this: "And there arose a generation after them... who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel and the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals and they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who had brought them out of Egypt."

The key is that there arose a generation who did not know the ways of the Lord. And so then the question is, well, whose fault was that? It wasn't their fault; they grew up not knowing the ways of the Lord, implying the parents who witnessed all of the great triumph under the leadership of Joshua failed to pass on the faith to the next generation. And so then you have the dilemma and the catastrophe throughout the book of Judges.

I think about faithfully discipling the generations and thinking in terms of long term. Like the Book of Proverbs says, "A wise man leaves an inheritance for his children's children." Well, I don't think that necessarily means purely economic inheritance, purely money in the bank or investments, but I think it also means an inheritance of the faith. I mean even an inheritance of land and property and having assets to build upon in order to build a life in faith with families down the road.

So, here in the village, one of the things is that there's enough Christianity introduced into the Lahu language that there is what I call a plausibility structure. In other words, Christianity is plausible. It's been around enough; they understand there's a church here. They may not know what goes on in that church or what that church believes, but there is enough of a presence of church life. But even the people who are walking to church every Sunday, my guess is that most don't even know the true gospel. They go because their family goes and they've been converted into Christianity as a family—not by regeneration, but by just group conversion, which is not necessarily a problem. It doesn't mean that they're saved, it just means that they're really close to the kingdom and they have this framework through which to understand reality. And so when the gospel is explicated and it is clarified for them and contended for, it connects; it makes sense to them.

So my prayer for the Hill Tribe Mission Center is that God would use it to bring clarity to the gospel to the already existing plausibility of Christianity in so many of the various hill tribes around here. I thank you for your support for the Hill Tribe Mission Center. It was just last January that I started asking people for donations, and within the first few months, I had nearly all the money I needed to build it. And now it's virtually built. We're putting in the hot water heater this weekend and the lights are in, and we're hoping, as the Lord wills, to have it done by just around Christmas time.

So thank you for your gifts. And one other thing—I know I'm going long, but this is kind of my Christmas message to you all. I talked to you about these audio Bibles that I was deciding which one I was going to use. Today I finally went with this one. It's called KULUMI X. I decided on that and a handful of you have emailed me and I told you I'd get back to you. I think each one is $29.99 US dollars. What I'll probably do is order a bunch of these from the company and have them preload them with Lahu or Thai or Hmong or Akha or Lisu or whatever language group I'm going to be working with, but most likely just Lahu for now.

When either I go back to the States in 2026 or when I know of a missionary or guests coming, I'll preorder them and have them come with them. I can't have them shipped here very easily because there's a big customs tax on electronics into Thailand. So it's easier if I just bring them in myself or I have them come with a visitor. So if any of you want to give to that, like I said, it's each one is $29.99. I don't need them urgently, so it's not an emergency, but it's just something I'm going to start accumulating in 2026.

So, from our family to those of you who support us and pray for us, thank you so much for standing with us in the gospel and just your kind words, your Christmas cards and your emails, and just being faithful to partner with us. I'm so thankful to God for you. Have a Merry Christmas and may the joy of Christ refresh you this Christmas and may the God of peace, may his countenance rest upon you, and may you know the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God bless you. Merry Christmas.

The Pattern of Sound Words: Rediscovering the "Form" of Doctrine in 2 Timothy

The Pattern of Sound Words: Rediscovering the "Form" of Doctrine in 2 Timothy

Video Transcript:

I wanted to pick up where I left off thematically from the last video talking about the sacredness of texts and how the different language groups I've worked with over the years have valued not just what is written in the Bible, but how it is written. This is one reason why they are more and more resistant to common, up-to-date versions of their Bible translations, because they value a sacredness to the old way of saying things.

In the last generation or so, there's been such a hyperfocus on globalization, on the flattening of particularity in cultures. When you go to a mega city like Bangkok, the buildings all look like mega cities in other countries around the world—like Tokyo or Manhattan or even some up-and-coming cities in parts of Africa. They are just tall, cement, metal buildings. Not a lot of color, not a lot of cultural nuance, just plain and very industrialized, hyper-manufactured cities without much cultural, local flair and flavor to them.

One thing that I’ve noticed that Christians value in a lot of language groups is this sense of belonging to a legacy, to a spiritual family that is transgenerational, that comes across the generations, that unites the people. I've learned from even the local language group that I work with that they value the original, initial Bible translation in their language because there's an attachment they have to the believers that have come before them.

Now, there are always offers to update the Bible translations, and sometimes they need to be updated. I work with translation ministries and I do my own translation projects. One of the hardest things is to motivate enough locals to want a new Bible translation because they are very dedicated. They are very loyal to what was handed down to them.

I'm thinking of a passage from 2 Timothy 1:13 that says this: "Follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me." Paul is telling Timothy this pattern or form or standard of sound words that had been passed on from Paul to Timothy had been heard from him in the faith. Whenever there's a definite article on faith in Paul's writing, he's identifying not just this ethereal sense of belief in God. It's implied, but when he uses the definite article, "the faith," he's talking about gospel doctrine. He's talking about the doctrine of Christ, the whole package of what is taught about the truth of Christ that saves—what you need to know to be a believer.

So, "the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me, that I’ve passed on to you verbally in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." The content is gospel doctrine, the systematic teachings of the Bible when it comes to salvation doctrines, in the manner of the love that is in Christ. It's not just content, but it also corresponds to the character of Christ. It's the word of Christ, the word from Christ, the word about Christ, in the manner of Christ.

What is key here is not so much the content of the instruction or the character of the instruction. What is key here is the pattern, the standard, or in the KJV it says "the form." This word for the pattern of sound words, or the standard in the LSB, or the form in the KJV, (I'm using the ESV here), it really means like a super example. It means a super type, like you get the word typology from part of this word. It's a point of reference. It's this sense of something that is fixed and that is passed down as a pattern, an example, a figure, a form that needs to conform what you think and how you think.

Paul is talking about there is a standard of words that comes out of my mouth that I have so invested into you, my disciple Timothy, that you need to pass on. That is the faith, that is the gospel doctrine that I have passed on to you. Paul is putting so much emphasis on a way words come out of his mouth, a rhythm, a standard, a pattern of words that should be impressed upon disciples, upon the people of God.

I think Paul is probably referring to his old Hebrew practices, which he learned as a good Hebrew, and then he’s passing on to Timothy. This is Bible memory. That was the catechesis, that was the content of training back then. You had to memorize large chunks of scripture and be able to defend them, know what you believe and why you believe it.

Paul is basically saying that this practice of immersing ourselves in the standard of the words of scripture—not just general ideas about scripture, not just summary statements, as important as those are, because that's where we get a lot of our creedal and systematic teachings—but there is a fixed nature, a fixed point of focus to memorizing scripture that is the content of discipleship.

What they would do in discipleship, and I’ve seen this in our local churches, is they'll memorize a lot of scripture and then they'll summarize the statements in a similar way to catechism or a creed or a confession. If you look at any ancient creed, confession, or catechism, they're going to make a statement that is a summary statement about scripture, and then they're going to have a bunch of verses that supports that, that you can go to and argue from. This was a very common method. In fact, I would argue, the implied biblical method of discipleship.

I see that in a lot of these hill tribes churches that I work with. Some of them do it instinctively. They've never really been taught to do it this way, but I’ve learned to notice it in them and then to play to their strengths. I don't want to come to them with a book study or a new Bible study package. I want to just do what they already are doing instinctively and then show them how it's very biblical and how to make it even more practical and give them tools for using the small underdeveloped methods that they're instinctively practicing. I'm trying to help them develop those out and use what is already culturally there that corresponds to what the Bible teaches and to show them, "Hey, when you memorize scripture, when you sing scripture to the kids when you're down at the river or you're out in the rice fields, or you're washing dishes or you're going to get water, when you're singing scripture, you're actually discipling the kids using a pattern of sound words, and that is very biblical." Here are some ways we can maximize the memory of scripture and how you can impress upon the next generation a pattern of sound words that corresponds to the faith, the gospel doctrine in Jesus Christ.

One of the things I do is I try to ground people's sense of assurance and conviction and comfort in the written word of God. It's not just what comes from the pastor. It's not just what is memorized in the songs. It's what comes from the mouth of God. So I'm trying to take these small little practices that they're already doing, showing them where they divert from scripture and how to course correct, and then also showing them where they actually correspond to scripture and how to play to their strengths and how to make the best of practices they're already doing, and then to give them tools to be self-feeders and to access scripture for themselves.

You can pray for us, pray for me as I work in translation and training and working with people who are first-generation believers. Sometimes they're just cultural Christians. They've gone to church or their family has gone to church, but they don't know the gospel. They're so close to the gospel. They're like Nicodemus. They're right up against the kingdom of God, and they just need a small, soft push over the line into the kingdom of light from the dominion of darkness. You can pray for us, pray for me as I make clear, I make plain the goodness of the gospel in Jesus Christ.

A New Way to Connect: Go Behind the Scenes of Our Ministry & Research

A New Way to Connect (Audio)

(Video Transcript):

Hi, everyone. Wanted to introduce to you a new video clip idea I've had, and I'm hoping in the new year and even as we prepare for Christmas to start recording some short five to 10 minute little clips, maybe longer at times, but hopefully no longer than 10 minutes. Wanting to just share with you some of the things I'm teaching in the classes and the pastor training sessions I do, and maybe some of the research and writing projects I've got going on just so you can get a flavor of some of the day-to-day, week to week content development I'm producing.

And then on alternative clips, I'm going to be sharing with you maybe some prayer updates, maybe when I'm out and about down at the Hill Tribe Mission Center or at church or in a different village or maybe down in the city or something. I'll try to snap a few minute update so you can know how to pray for us and different things that we have going on.

One of the motivations of these videos is I want to just speak in a way that's casual, like as if you're in one of my classes or maybe you're here for a meal and we're just talking, pretty unscripted. I have a few things I'm going to want to share with you, but it's not, I don't have any notes in front of me. I just have my Bible and maybe I'll have a book or something out over here. I want to read to you a passage from, and then just make commentary on it. But basically I just want to give back to you, those of you who partner with us in prayer and support, churches, individuals, just want to give back to you some of the things that the Lord is doing in my teaching and in my life, and just help you feel part of some of the things that we're developing in the ministry.

One thing I wanted by way of segueing into discussing some content, one thing I wanted to share with you was that I had just been to a Bible translation conference here in Thailand. It was the biannual, and it's the first time they've held it internationally. Previously in previous years, they've held it in Texas, but they decided to hold it in an international location, so it was here in Thailand. And I went to it and was able to interact with lots of thinkers and developers of Bible translation practices and technology and philosophy and theory. And it was, it was a good conference. I learned about some different projects going on that I didn't know were existing.

I learned about some different tools for oral based people. Oral based means they don't read well. It doesn't mean they're illiterate. They might just be illiterate. And so they don't dominantly learn by reading. And so they have these oral bibles, which is just basically voice recordings that are pretty hardy. People can put 'em in their like, their front pocket or put 'em around their neck like on a lanyard, or they can put 'em in their purse or their side bag and listen to the Bible when they're out in the fields working. In my context here in the village, in the mountains, people are out in the fields most days working till evening, and they don't have enough juice in their phones to run all day. Even if they did, their phones may not even have their heart language recorded, so they don't have an audio bible or anything like that. But these, these audio bibles are pretty hardy. They can charge really quickly. The battery runs really well and they're very simple. I was just going to show you one of 'em. I got a couple different versions, couple different companies, but this is just one I'm going to play for you. On this you have a Thai, a Thai audio Bible, and also a Black Lahu audio Bible. I don't have the dialect that is in our village. The dialect in our village is still unrecorded and unwritten. It's very small dialect, but they do use the Black Lahu written Bible in their churches. Whether they understand it completely, I don't think so.

One of the reasons they like to go to church and typically church is pretty packed. Like yesterday at church—today's I'm recording this on a Monday—yesterday at church, I sit up front every Sunday because I do the closing benediction at the end of the church. And it was full. There wasn't a seat left. And I know one of the reasons for that is because they want to hear somebody explain the word and they have a rhythm and a pattern of going to church every Sunday. They don't have a Bible for themselves to read that they can read, that they do understand. So this, this is the Black Lahu, now granted it's not their dialect, but they know it well enough to kind of get the gist. And then likely they would come to church and hope that maybe some of the passages they're reading in the service, maybe some of the things they're listening to that can be explained. So this is an example. Okay, that's. This is Black Lahu. Okay, so you can maybe you could hear a little bit of the difference between the two languages, very different languages. I mean, I could, because I operate in those two different languages, but the genius of this is it's just very simple. You just skip ahead to different books and different chapters, and or different languages, and it's just, it's not waterproof, but it's there's very little space on this for water to get into.

So I will, I will say if any of you are interested in sponsoring a certain amount of purchases of these, I can, I can get these ordered. And if you wanted to give to buying like five or 10 or, you know, enough for a family or something, I do have some families that would like something like this. Just email me. I can send you the details on how much they are because there's different, there's different sizes and different capacities. So there are different prices, but they're different prices, but they're pretty inexpensive comparatively speaking. I mean, we're not talking about buying a cell phone.

But I, I will say just to transition a little bit, one thing I've been thinking about in terms of Bible translation, since that's kind of the world I've been in for the last while just with the conference and working on some different translation projects, is one thing that I've stumbled over is some of these language groups, whether it's Thai or Lahu or Chinese or Burmese or something where they've had a translation for a while. Why is it that so many language groups are hesitant to adopt a more contemporary or maybe a even a clearer translation if there's a 2.0 version of a translation of their language? Why? Why do they always prefer the original translation? Maybe the more old, old style, kind of like the King James Version. Why do they prefer that when certainly they don't understand it as well as the more contemporary one? I've wondered this for many, many years because in China, that's the same way. It is in other countries I've been in. They always liked the original. And so then I have to ask myself, well, is it just a western thing to always want something more innovative, something new, more cutting edge? What is it about our mindset as English speakers, native English speakers, that we just we're always fascinated with the latest version, the latest translation? And why do we genuinely think that newer is better? Well sometimes, if you're talking to like a textual credit, sometimes they think, well, we've discovered more manuscripts or we've, we have clearer manuscripts to kind of figure out some of the unclear areas in previous older manuscripts that we've used. That's all true and that's all right. There's nothing wrong with that. That's actually great. Praise the Lord. We keep discovering better and clearer manuscripts and we have better technology to access some of those.

That's not the point, because people don't think in terms of manuscript collections and where we're getting some of the translations from. People in these cultures, they're thinking in terms of tradition and sacredness and a set apartness of the text. And so I've, I've actually learned, I guess I've concluded over the last year or two that one of the appeals to Christian growth in some of these language groups is that they have a big word, a codification. They have codified a certain sacred Christian sound, a certain sacred Christian text that when they go to church, it's kind of like I say in my classes, they speak the language of Zion. It's a special language. It's not a common, civilian language. It's something that they need to be taught. It's something that they need to have inculcated over time. It's not so diverse from their common street language that nobody could understand it. They do know it is, you know, Thai or Lahu or Chinese or, or you know, Burmese or some other, some other language I've worked with before. But there's something to it that's special and it's not unlike people who go to mosque and they hear classic Arabic spoken, that very few people even speak anymore. If you want to learn how to read the Quran in its original Arabic, you have to. You have to study classic Arabic in, in Cairo or Syria in some of the places where they still teach it in their institutions, or here in Thailand, when people go to the Buddhist temple, they hear kind of a sacred Buddhist script and they like it. Though they may not always completely understand it because it's not the kind of spoken language, they would, they would usually use. There's an attraction to it because it sounds otherworldly. Well, that same mindset has has influenced the way they do church. And Christian discipleship is there is a sacredness and an other worldliness to kind of the old ways, the old style of speaking, the language of Zion. And so I've I've actually come to appreciate it. I've come to appreciate how they take their Bible so seriously and there's a I there's a gravitas, kind of a seriousness, a sober mindedness to when they read their Bibles or they try to understand their Bibles that it's serious, like they. They don't read it casually. They don't throw their Bible on the ground. And actually they, they don't even mark it up really, because they just, they treat it with such specialness and it's like their one Bible. They don't have multiple Bibles. They don't have different leather Bibles with different leather covers. They just have one Bible and they treat it very respectfully.

And I think the, I think the reverence and the gravitas that they treat their Bible with is actually, it's healthy. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that they error in terms of Bibliology, where they worship the Bible. I don't think they do that. I think they just, their reverence for the written word is rightly ordered. They, they treat it like it's something really special and it is. And so because of my, my time with the villagers and the Hill tribes people and seeing how they, they really do respect the Bible in a way that's, you know, a corrective even to me or to just other native English speakers. I've just spent some time in the book of the Psalms, especially Psalm 119, over the last couple months with the boys. Our family, we've been working through Psalm 119 very slowly just meditating on and memorizing parts of Psalm 119 that talk about the specialness, the sacredness of the word of God and how it influences all of life.

So as I, as I shoot these videos, this one's a little bit longer than I was originally planning for some of the other ones, but just as an intro video, just want to give you a taste of some of the things I'll be talking about. And maybe on future videos, I'll be talking to you through some of the stuff that our family is working through in Psalm 119. And like I said, these are going to be fairly casual. This is just going to be one shot. I'm not going to reshoot these. I'll just do it one time and if I mess up, it's just going to, I'm just going to roll with it just like it's here in person at the dinner table, in the classroom, something kind of casual, but just just sharing from my life, from the word, maybe maybe a project I'm working on to give you a snapshot into what's going on and what I'm doing and what our family is doing. And so look for these every few weeks. I'm hoping, like I said, in 2026 to start rolling these out biweekly. Maybe if I'm traveling, I'm not going to be able to do it, but just just be checking your email inbox occasionally for short little video snippets. And let me know if you like 'em. If maybe, maybe some of you have questions about something I'm teaching on and you want me to flesh it out on a future video, I'd be happy to do that. But just doing this for the sake of connectivity, relationship, and just ongoing fellowship over the word of God. And thank you so much for your prayers and support and I look forward to speaking with you again in future videos. God bless you and have a, have a great Thanksgiving. God bless.