Well, good evening. Happy Independence Day weekend to all. I'm Troy Skinner, bringing you greetings from Household of Faith in Christ. Your brothers and sisters there, we wish you well, and we pray for you all from time to time, by the way. We might have to get some people to shift over or the building's gonna tip. Let me check the moorings underneath. Something wrong with you guys over here? Are they allergic to you? Anyway, so the lineup... Oh, okay, gotcha. Those are like the box seats. All right. Yeah, is this like one of those key games, there's fireworks afterwards, anything like that? Yeah. So, the lineup for today, we're going to do three hymns today, and all of them are going to be patriotic in orientation, so that makes sense, given the weekend that we're celebrating. Just a reminder, though, ultimately, political freedom isn't what it's about. It's freedom in Christ that's really what it's all about. Let's keep that front and center. We'll have the announcements and take up the collections to support the ministry here. We'll have a time for prayer. I'm going to warn you now, I can save myself some time later. Most of you have been here when I've been here before. But when the time of prayer comes, it's a small enough group here, we're going to treat it as a prayer for people. So you can start gathering your thoughts now when the time comes. Feel free to pray aloud. In turn, I know not everybody's got, I feel like a broken record. I've been doing this a long time. People in this room have been doing it longer than me, probably. And you've been in prayer settings, situations where there's prayer settings, and some people you can know for 50 years, you've never heard them pray. Because some people are just so self-conscious about praying aloud, they're afraid, they're praying wrong, what will people think, what if they use the wrong words, or whatever. This is the body of Christ. We're all one. Everybody's at a different stage in their sanctification and their growth. And some people have been praying for 50 years and some people have been praying for 50 days. Some people prayed for the first time 50 minutes ago. You're gonna get better at it if you do it more. Maybe they'll balance this out. Looks like they're leaning in that direction. All right, good, here we go. So anyway, to finish the thought, if you've never prayed aloud before, maybe today could be that first time, and I promise you the second time will be so much more comfortable and easier. So if you can get over that hurdle, It will be a blessing to you, I promise you. And you know what? If you've got an unselfish bone in your body, let me speak to that. It will be a blessing to the others. It really, really is. It's edifying to the entire body, to hear others' hearts in prayer, even if it's the simplest prayer. So when we get to that point, and I'm emphasizing this point because last week I think we had two people that prayed aloud. And that's a record low for when I've been here. And so no pressure, don't feel like it's a pressure, but it's a strong encouragement that maybe today is a day you could do so when we get there. So anyway. Can I say something about that? Sure. Because normally we do, we do, Instead of the way you do the popcorn prayer, which I like, but usually we share our joys and concerns, and then the pastor prays, so we pray. Yesterday, I got the privilege of going to this event in Gettysburg, and it was called, If My People America, and it was a call to prayer for America. That was interesting. Well, I heard about it and I decided I was going to go. And it was supposed to be from 12 noon to 3 o'clock. And I went, oh, I can pray for three hours. This would be great. I finally left there at 4.30, and they were still going. But the organizers, they kind of explained how they were going to do it. And they had groups of people come up and pray. But they said, we're all going to pray together. And they said, we want you to understand, some people are going to pray loud. Pray really softly. They said, we don't want you to be offended, but we are all praying together. Holy Spirit was rolling in that. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong. I've pastored a few churches over the years, and one of the churches did it that way, where people would voice the things they wanted prayed, and then I, as the pastor, would kind of basically regurgitate everything in a prayer format. And this is a small effort, but we can get away with that. Sometimes the churches get too big. You can spend 45 minutes, people trying to share things, and that can be a challenge. And I've been in more structured situations where the pastor comes knowing that he's praying on behalf of the people and there's no sharing. And if you want to get in touch with whoever's going to be doing that, the pastor or some designated person who's going to pray in advance so they can incorporate it into their prayer. It's not that it's right or wrong, but I was talking afterwards last week We've got a challenge in the Western Church and in our context, the American Church right now, in that most Christians aren't growing at a fast enough clip in their ability to do things that Christians should do. Christians And this room might be the exception to the rule, so I'm not picking anybody in this room right now. But generally speaking, you know it's true, look around you. The Christians around you, they read the Bible, and you ask them what they just read, and they don't really know for sure what they just read. They don't have practice in understanding and digesting the word of God, as we're told to do in the Bible. We should be internalizing this and wrestling with God's word to understand it better, and we don't do it often enough, and so we don't know how. We should go to the Lord in prayer. But we don't do that often enough. Even in our private, quiet life, we don't do that often enough because we, for a variety of reasons. But part of that is we don't practice it. So, and we also don't share the gospel very well. And too many people feel like sharing the gospel is inviting somebody to church. Or facilitating a meeting with the pastor. or introducing them to somebody that's been in the faith longer, that kind of thing. And that kind of thing, again, I'm not judging the method that typically would happen, because it's all fine, but one of the things that can be a problem with the prayer method that was mentioned where everybody voices their concerns and their praises, hopefully there's some praises in there too, and then the pastor does the praying. the people should be able to pray, too. As a practical concern, if there were 50 or 100 people in here right now, I would not do the popcorn-style prayer, well, without advanced permission, because if everybody decides to pray in a situation like that, the prayer part could be an hour or more. I'm going on long-winded here, but I just, because of some give and taking, that's all good. So anyway, take advantage of opportunities to practice your faith. Put yourself out there, share the gospel with somebody this week. Put yourself out there, pray aloud tonight if you haven't done so before. Read the Bible, and if you have a question, don't just put it aside like, I don't really know what I just read, or I think I know, but I'm not sure. Go find somebody that you can trust and say, hey, I think it means this, is that what it means? Put yourself out there, take some chances. We've got to get better at this. The culture is burning down around us. The house is so on fire, the foundational support structure is also burning right now. We have got to get better at this fast. And that's actually gonna tie into the theme of what I'm gonna be talking about during the message today as well. So when the time comes to pray, if you don't pray, I'm not gonna judge you. And if you do pray, you pray horribly, I'm not gonna judge you. But there's an opportunity for some correction, too. That's what we're afraid of, though, right? So I wanna, with your permission, if I hear somebody pray in a way that doesn't feel very in alignment with what scripture would tell us, I'm gonna look for an opportunity to try to, before you leave, to say, hey, by the way, love that you prayed. Next time you wanna think about this. I had it happen in my church last week, actually. When the praying was done, I had a chance to do a corrective, and everybody learned from it. And nobody was embarrassed. It's always been a motivation of mine, but the last couple of years, it's become so clear. God's people have got to get serious about getting better at being the church. Mini sermon over. Let's, all who are able, let's stand and sing our first hymn tonight, which is hymn number 548, Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies. O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea. Oh, beautiful ♪ For Pilgrim King, who's stern impassioned stress ♪ ♪ A thoroughfare, for free and lean, across the wilderness ♪ America! America! God shed thine every glow. Confirm thy soul with self-control. Thy liberty in law. Oh, musical for heroes true, In liberating strife. ♪ Through more than self they're plunging love ♪ ♪ And mercy more than life ♪ ♪ America, America ♪ ♪ May God thy hope revive ♪ ♪ To all success ♪ In nobleness and every name divine. O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years. ♪ Thine alabaster cities gleam ♪ ♪ Undimmed by human tears ♪ ♪ America, America ♪ ♪ God shed his grace on thee ♪ ♪ And crown thy good ♪ with brotherhood from sea to shining sea. Everyone think he's seen it? So, the person that's done the announcements the last couple times I've been here is not here. Who's handling announcements today? I did know that next Sunday, Bill Horton will be here from the Santa Cruz Church in Brooklyn. And I think the Newtown Ambassadors, after the fall, will be here. And the following week, Wasnt that the name of a country singer a long time ago? He likes country music. If not, it should be a country singers day, right? Anyway, all right, we're going to pass around, I guess, the collection plate at this point to support the ministry that takes place here at Fairview Chapel. Okay, this is a time for us to meditate upon God's great blessings on us, and we're just giving back a small token of appreciation for what he's given us. So let's be thinking about what happens. Everything that happens here tonight is an act of worship, including this. So think about that as... Honorable, if you could rise for the singing of the doxology. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, Father, we do praise you. We bless your name. You are a holy, holy, holy God. We, in a particular way, invite your presence in a way that we would feel tonight, that we would be conscious of the presence of your spirit. And that when we leave here today, that we would be conscious of the presence of your spirit in our everyday walk. As we go about earning a living and taking care of paying bills and buying and trading things and that sort of thing, that we would recognize that all of these things are possible because of your provision. And as a token of our appreciation, We give back this small portion. We ask your blessing upon it that those that are charged with stewarding it would be filled with wisdom and discernment to put these monies to good use, to kingdom-advancing, God-glorifying use. It's in the name of Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen. Everyone may be seated. So we have now reached the much discussed portion of the service where we're going to do the prayers of the people. a lot of churches have bulletins where you actually see it's called prayers of the people and it's the pastor oftentimes who's doing the praying either again just full bore knowing going in that's what he's going to be doing or it's the people share their concerns and then those prayers of the people are offered to God as a sacrifice of praise and petition to the Lord on behalf of the people but in this case there's about a dozen of us So even if everybody prayed, we would still get out of here at a reasonable hour. So everybody is invited to pray. There's no expectation that everyone will. I'm going to ask in a moment here, Teresa, to start. And when she finishes, in turn, when it's clear that she's paused and somebody else can jump in. If two people should happen to jump in at the same time, One person can use some discernment and decide, oh, I'll let that person go, and then they can jump in on the back side. We don't want to have confusion. We don't want everybody praying at once. And then when it's become clear that everybody who's feeling led to pray aloud tonight has done so, then I will close us in prayer. And if you're just not comfortable praying aloud, but you've got things on your heart, God hears your silent prayers too. The downside is we don't. And there's a blessing, as I mentioned before, to everybody having a chance to hear some of those things that are on your heart. Again, no pressure, but there's a bit of an expectation that we'll do better than two tonight than we did last week. So we'll see how that goes. Anyway, could you get us started, Teresa? Father God, we come into your presence with great expectations. You are glorious, holy, holy, holy God. And the fact that you invite us into your presence is just miraculous. So we praise your holy name and we just come before you with adoration. Lord, I give thanks for that prayer meeting yesterday, for that ballroom at a hotel full of people just praying and your Holy Spirit rolling like thunder through that room. And Lord, I thank you for the divine appointment you gave me afterwards when I When I was driving in that pouring down rain, and I saw a woman, and you told me to stop. And I stopped, and she got in my car. Lord, I was able to witness in your name, and I'm just grateful for that. So Lord, I'm going to lift up that young woman. Her name is Amber, and she was able to share with me the challenges that she's facing in her life. And Lord, she also shared with me how you are providing for her. So I just give you praise for that, and thank you, and know that you will continue. And I just hope that the divine appointment you gave the two of us was an encouragement to her to just keep leaning on you and trusting you. So please, Lord, bless Amber. And please also bless little baby Oliver, who was born with breathing problems, Lord. And his parents are looking to you right now, and we just lift him up as well. Thank you. Heavenly Father, you ask us to pray continuously, you command us to pray continuously, so that's what we strive to do. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here to come to this place. I want to thank you for the opportunity with 700 men to join in a retreat based on your word, on your teaching, on your love, and you help guide us in the presence of the Holy Spirit. to a better understanding, a better wisdom of the word and how to interact with the world around us. God, there is a lot of brokenness in this world, and we just ask that you would fill your people here and all other churches around the world that carry this Christian name, that you would fill us with the power and the courage and the strength through your Holy Spirit to continue to spread the word of your life in a broken, broken world. God, we ask as we push through this holiday weekend, there are people traveling everywhere to see loved ones, coming home from seeing loved ones. We just ask for your blanket of protection over them as they travel and that you would bless their time together with families. And lastly, Lord, there are tens of thousands of people, especially from the U.S., who are employed in service to this great nation, and they are far away from their families. And we ask that you would watch over them, lessen the anxiety in their hearts, keep their families strong, and just help guide them until they can return home safely. All of this we ask in Jesus' name, and we give thanks. Amen. Dear God in heaven, take care of Stanley and Bruce, and Stacy, Bruce, and Bramley. Help them. They need so much help. Take care of everybody else in this earth. Bring us peace on earth. And thank you for helping me find out where George is. God, please continue to help the sick and the suffering, and minister to them as they go through their journey. and especially give grace to their caregivers so that they may have the patience to be able to love and care for their loved ones and care for themselves. Father, we thank you for your goodness and mercy, including many blessings, Lord. We thank you for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who made and makes this relationship possible. We thank you, Lord Jesus. We thank you, Holy Spirit. And we thank you, Heavenly Father. We thank you for our nation, your people. Guide us with your spirit and word. Help us, Lord, to overcome. And told us that the spirit is well in you at the cross this week. Help us to overcome the world. We ask praise and thanks in Jesus' blessed name. Amen. Father, God has become before us one of the first to see you. May we give him praise and glory. We thank you, Father, for this beautiful day and many blessings bestowed upon us, the opportunity of giving the Father into your presence, in ordination of the Holy Spirit, to care for us and to prepare us for the good of others. It's the Holy Spirit that teaches us, gives us understanding. The latest God-indirected follow-through your words, even. And Lord, will you take your word with us, share your word with us, so that we may be different when we leave and when we came in. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Thank you, Father. Thank you for this day, giving us the freedom that we have in our country. And I ask, Heavenly Father, that we use this freedom to help others that are in need. that we use this freedom and the light we have within us to go out into the world and just let people know as a colleague that America cares, that America is based on love and grace, that all the Christ has taught and God has shown to us. We ask you, in Jesus' name, amen. Father, you're so good to us. You have made us in your image, each of us unique in our own way, yet bound together by a common humanity. While we are broken and frail and filled with far too many sinful attitudes and actions and desires, He sent your son who offered himself up to pay the price, the price that we should pay. And you've revealed these truths to us by the power of your spirit to illumine our minds and not only soften and change our hearts, but to give us new hearts of flesh. You've preserved your word for us so we can study who you are, who you've made us to be, the nature of that relationship, how we're to serve others around us. And with that in mind, Lord, we pray for all the leaders that are impacting so many lives around the world. Some of those leaders, political, so we pray for those who are in positions of significant power and authority over nations, including our own president and vice president, plus all the prime ministers, Even those that might wear the, proudly wear the badge of the dictator, that you would do a work in their life to make the lives of those people better. And to open more avenues for the sharing of gospel truth. We pray for all of those occupying governor's mansions around this country. But not just political leaders and the legislators and the judicial branch and all those sorts of things, but leaders in business, that they would be motivated, all of them, by providing a service and needed goods to those around them, that they would understand the importance of staying profitable so they can stay in business, that they would not be greedy, given over to sinful desire for more, that they would take good care of their employees and their employees would do a good job taking care of the business that's at hand. And Lord, we pray for the leaders in your church. If you would draw us ever more close to a right discernment and dividing of your word, that we would live it out more consistently, and the people will be inspired by what they hear and see from pulpits all across this land. And in the song we sang just minutes ago, we do beseech your grace on this country. And we do ask that you would mend our every flaw. But our plans and purposes wouldn't be about political expediency, but would be about bringing glory to your name and being useful in advancing the cause of the kingdom and sharing the glorious good news of Jesus Christ. because people need to hear it. It's in his name we pray. Amen. All right, we're gonna stand and sing our second hymn. It's 552, My Country Tis of Thee. Country, it is of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. And where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride, On every mountainside, Let freedom ring. I native country thee, Land of the noble free, Thy name I love. I love thy rafts and rills, Thy woods and temple hills, Thy farm with rapture fills, Like that of gold. Where muses swell the breeze, And rain from all the trees, Sweet freedom's song. Where mortals plant the grain, Where old and brave partake, Where rocks their silence break, The sound of war. our father's God to thee, author of liberty, to thee we sing. Oh, may our land be bright with freedom's holy light. Protect us, my advisor, Everyone may be seated. You know, there's nothing like singing a song from almost 300 years ago to show you one of two things, either how much the language has changed or how much vocabulary we've allowed ourselves to lose over the years, but rills. Who knows what a rill is? All right, so tonight we're gonna do something, I'm gonna have a message, but it's not a sermon per se. A couple of people I talked to outside of the confines of this building who are here now, they know some of the backstory. I'm gonna share the backstory a little bit and that'll give you some context for what I'm doing here. When I started preaching here at Fairview Chapel, I happened at the time to be working through materials to be preaching on a series of sermons from the church I was at on the epistles of John. I felt like every time I came back here, well, I'll just continue that series here. Well, as things worked out, the way that series concluded is we did a extended application of the truths that are found in first, second, and third John. using as our foil for that a book that was really popular at the time and is less popular now called The Shack by William Paul Young. It's since been made into a movie and it's one of the all-time, seriously, no exaggeration, it's one of the all-time best-selling books ever. It's crazy how popular this book is. And what really caught my attention why I chose at the time back then to turn it into Sunday school lessons, adult Sunday school lessons, and I host a radio show called The Faith Debate and we had panel discussions about it. I even had a two and a half hour discussion with the author, William Paul Young, on my show. So I went on a deep dive on this and did a lot of research to figure out where is he coming from with all that's being presented in this book. And I've shared a lot of that in some messages here actually this year, last maybe three times I think I've been here, we've focused on stuff in the chat. And so you've heard almost everything that I have to say about it, but here's the thing. There were materials prepared for those adult Sunday school classes that are thought starters. And we're not gonna do a Sunday school class here, but I'm gonna share the meat, the bulk of those kinds of materials to get you thinking. Because as I said at the beginning of tonight, we've got to get better at this. So many people watched the movie, so many people read the book and came away with it with nothing but praise. And there's a lot to praise in the book, there really is. But there are some gargantuan problems as well. And too many Christians in my walk haven't recognized them. And I'm trying to do everything I can. And so it's not about tearing down William Paul Young. It's not about tearing down the shack. These philosophies, these heresies, these rebirth heresies, because they're not new. They've been around for years, but they've reared their ugly head. And all the things that we've seen go crazy in our world around us, particularly these last We've really felt the last two or three years, but you could, if those were paying closer attention, you could feel the last five or 10 years even. And a lot of those problems, how did we get here? How did this happen? I don't recognize my country anymore. I don't recognize my church anymore. How did this happen? If you can understand what's being taught in the pages of the shack, you can understand it better. So I'm trying to equip us to be better thinkers on these questions. So I'm just gonna work through or walk through some of those idea starters, conversation starters in the Sunday school, and I'll add some thoughts. I'm not expecting a whole lot of give back from you guys who will be here forever. But these are the kinds of questions, if you are reading the shack or watching the movie or having a discussion with somebody about the things in it, I'm wondering how well equipped you would feel in having these conversations. So, for example, on page 113 of the shack, the quote, light bulb goes on for Mac, he's the main character in the story, and he finally understands, so it says, that quote, everything was about him. Everything's about the human race, end quote. Does that, light a warning sign over your head a little bit. Max Licato is a very popular Christian author. He's written dozens, probably, of New York Times bestsellers. He's one of the most prolific, best-selling Christian authors of all time. He does get criticized for having a theology that's like a mile wide and an inch deep. He's not always that deep, and his theology is the accusation in him. There are times when that accusation is probably fair. And there's a couple of things that Max has done that I'm not a fan of. I think that he's, you know, he drifts in a couple of places that are problematic. But on the whole, Max Lecate is a pretty good guy. His books can be helpful. Even Max Lucado, as trite as his book sometimes can be, the title of one of his books does so much better than what I just read from the shack. The title of one of Max's most successful books is called, It's Not About Me. It's not about me. It's about God, it's about Christ, about his plan. It's about me insofar as how I fit into all of that. So by extension, I guess it's about me, but it's not about me. And how does that ring with the culture around us, where it's all about me? And if we've got a book purporting to be biblical, having the main character have his epiphany moment, like, oh, I get it now, this Christianity thing, it's all about me. That is a worldly, secular, humanist kind of foundation stone, and so that'll put you in some really weird places fast. I didn't mention this character at all in any of the sermons that I've preached here on the shack, but there's a main character I left out, a character who plays the role of wisdom, and it's a Hispanic woman, the representation of wisdom. And she says on page 155, so many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows, and the love simply expands to contain it. Love is just the skin of knowing. That kind of in a fortune cookie sort of a way sounds profound. But it's Gnosticism. We're not saved by knowledge. And the Bible tells us knowledge passes away. Love does not pass away. And God is love. This has it inverted. It makes knowledge preeminent, diminishing God and his purposes. So, that's a problem. The shack claims, quote, that parents are too broken to love their children well. That's on page 154. What do we think about this? It's true. But it doesn't go far enough. A better thing to say was parents are too sinful to love their children well. That's the problem. The sin leads to the brokenness, and the brokenness can lead to additional cycles of sin. But if you've got somebody who's a parable parent, the answer isn't to go to them and say, hey, you know what? You've had a lot of hard things in your life, and you're broken. I get it, that's why you're not a good parent. No, it's you've got sin in your life. You need to repent and become a better parent. And you've had brokenness, so let me help you work through that brokenness so you're not so sinful. But the finer point is on the sin, not on the brokenness. Sinfulness and brokenness are not the same thing. Mack, again, the main character, he finally, deep into the book, it's like halfway into the book almost, or a little more than halfway, where he feels shame. Finally gets to a place where he feels shame. He's a very arrogant character in the first half of the story. But he feels shame for having been judging. And he's asked, by what criteria do you base your judgments? That's a good question for us. By what criteria do we base our judgments? Now, despite being a seminary-trained Christian in the story, supposedly, Mac is supposedly a seminary-trained Christian, he doesn't seem to know the answer. Because the answer is by the word of God, right? Mac doesn't know that. So he stammers. He doesn't really have an answer. And then he's told, well, he doesn't really have an answer because, according to the shack, there is no criteria for judging. And it says, quote, judging requires that you think yourself superior over the one you judge. There's a sinful sort of a judging, a self-righteous sort of a judging. That's not the context. That's the problem. We are to have discernment. We are to make judgments in this world. How do you know good from evil if you're not gonna make a judgment call? We are to judge, using God's word as the standard. And the shack misses that, unfortunately. In fact, the God character invites man to judge him. That's on page 160 of the shack. Does anybody think that's appropriate? In the shack, God says, It says that God would have to be worse than a human parent to send anyone to hell. That's on page 162. And let me add, Mac, he says that he understands the sacrificial love of the Son, but God, understanding God, that's another story. The sacrificial love of the Son he gets, but the harsh God of the Old Testament, in other words, right? That's what's implied here. And the way it's phrased is weird, because he understands the sacrificial love of the son, but God's another story, as if the son isn't God. It's a sleight of hand taking place on the pages of the shack, and I wonder how many people catch those sorts of things. After the series and after tonight, you're gonna be better at catching these sorts of things, because politicians do it, business leaders do it, churchmen do it. It's happening all around us, and once you have eyes to see it better, you will see, I'm telling you, because I'm living this life, it's not a fun life. I'm seeing it everywhere, and it's driving me mad. My goal is to drive you mad too, because we've got to see this stuff. We've got to get better at this. Page 164 of the shack, it says, quote, he chose the way of the cross where mercy triumphs over justice because of love. at a glance that could almost sound okay. But mercy doesn't triumph over justice in the Bible. Justice is fulfilled. Justice is not defeated. It's not triumphed over by anything or anyone. Justice is fulfilled. Christ pays the penalty. There is justice exacted, or Christ doesn't need to die. Five pages later, it says, judgment is not about destruction, but about setting things right, end quote. How are things set right if evil is not destroyed? Judgment is about destruction. It's about destroying evil. God does destroy things. Even if you've only read a children's Bible. You've heard of Sodom and Gomorrah, the great flood when Noah and his family are saved in an ark. Maybe you've read the book of Revelation and you know about the judgment that's coming there. Judgment is an act of love. And we create a false dichotomy when we set them at odds with one another. And too many of us, even in Christian churches, do exactly that. The premise of the story in the shack is that a little girl is killed out in the woods in a shack. That's where it gets its name. And Mac, he sees his deceased daughter on the other side, after she's dead. And in this place where he sees her, she already has her resurrected body. This is on page 167 of the book, by the way. See a problem with that? Has Christ returned yet in the story? No. We do not get our new glorified bodies until the second coming. But here in the shack, we've got somebody with their glorified body prior to the second coming. Not the biggest hill to die on, but that's a pretty glaring rookie kind of mistake to include in the shack. And the problem is, there's so many of these kinds of things, they undercut a true biblical understanding of how things work. It chips away here, it chips away here, it chips away here, and the little chip, different little chip isn't the biggest deal, but you start adding them up, and you've got not only a non-biblical view presented, but an anti-biblical view presented. Religion is said to be bad. Blaise Pascal is quoted on page 170 of the book saying, men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction. Now, there's an element of this that can be true. People can be zealous for a false religion, but true biblical godly religion, that's not when bad things happen. I mean, think about over the last, you know, 50, 100 years, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, were they devoted biblical Christians? And they were just too zealous for Christ and that's why they did all the horrors? Of course not. The challenge is we don't have enough people with religious conviction that are biblical Christian believers. That's the problem. But you walk away with a different understanding if you're not careful when you read the shack. Page 172 of the book, Mack says that his dreams and his imagination are, quote, more real than God's word in the Bible, more real than the illumination of the Holy Spirit, more real than the historical physical universe. What would you say to a friend if your friend was Mac and he said this to you? If you know some of the terms, you might say, wow, Mac, it sounds like you're promoting some sort of a universal docetism. Docetism is where there really isn't a reality. Everything's a phantasm. Everything's a spirit world. Or if there is a physical, the physical is bad. So the docetic heresy is Christ didn't really have a body because God would never dirty himself in that way to enter a physical universe. There's a flavor of that here in the shack. Now for all this trouble as the shack does on occasion say some things that are interesting. So the shack at least hints at the importance of repentance on page 175. Uses the phrase, what we desire is for you to re-turn to us. And it's spelled that way, R-E dash turn, to re-turn to us. It's actually not a horrible understanding of the word repentance. Repentance is a turning, a changing of the mind, a changing orientation. You've been going the wrong way and now you're gonna turn. And since we were made in God's image and we've broken away from that with the fall, so to return to the way God intended things, that's actually not a horrible, so we can give a little gold star on our little chart in the kindergarten room for William, Paul Young on that one. There are many sections of the book, unfortunately, that are anti-church. Pages 177, 178. Throughout the book, they take shots at the church, actually, particularly the organized church. And I will say, in fairness, though, a lot of the shots are kind of deserved, because it's taking shots at a church that's not behaving like the Bride of Christ should behave. And so, give the authors some credit there. But the Jesus character goes on to add, you're only seeing the man-made system. That's not what I came to build, not buildings and programs. It is all about relationships and simply sharing life. Boy, I wanna give him the benefit of the doubt, and I would if the context of the novel were different, but there's so many problems. I'm like, yeah, I don't know if I can give him the benefit of the doubt, because he's so close, so close to something that's good here. We do really well to recognize that Christ's church is not the building. It's not programs. In fact, you could probably make some interesting biblical arguments against some of those kinds of things, maybe, I don't know, I'm not going that far, but it's certainly not about that. And relationships, they are huge. Enormously huge. However, responsibilities come with those relationships. And what Christ instituted, it's about so much more than, quote, simply sharing life. I mean, if we were to follow this logic, we would be eliminating all teachers, all preachers, all elders, deacons, we might even eliminate the worship service. We're just sharing life. There's no life partners holding you accountable, edifying the body, none of that would be taking place. The Jesus character also says, An awful lot of what is done in my name has nothing to do with me and is often, even if unintentional, very contrary to my purposes. Well, yes, indeed, that's true. That is so true. Sadly, though, it's also very true about the book. The book too often has nothing to do with him, and even if it's unintentional, it's contrary to Christ's very purposes. On page 180, we see that Jesus wants us to be his friend. Well, that's good. The way it's presented in the book, that's it. Jesus is your friend, period, full stop. Is that what Christians should think about their relationship with Christ? He is our friend. But isn't he also our king? The most exalted prophet in history? Our high priest, our example? Our substitutionary atonement? Yeah, he's a friend. But we put him in this little tiny box and we end up with an American Christianity where Jesus is my boyfriend. Jesus' character also says, I don't create institutions, never have, never will. Can you name any institutions God has put in place? What about marriage, family? the church, the nation of Israel, government in general, even the priestly rules, the liturgical priesthood. Lots of institutional stuff going on there. I will say, the Shack actually makes it a point to go out of its way to say that marriage is not an institution. But this is an attempt to redefine terms, because I looked it up. Merriam-Webster dictionary, it says, institution. a significant practice, relationship, or organization in a society or culture, for example, the institution of marriage," end quote. It's literally the dictionary definition of institution. But Jesus says, like I said, I don't create institutions. That's an occupation for those who want to play God. Talk about incoherence. If God doesn't create institutions, then how is creating institutions playing God? It's illogical, it's nonsense. It doesn't make any sense at all. Jesus' character, I keep saying character because the Jesus in the shack is not the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus character says, it's not your job to change people or to convince them. You are free to love without an agenda. How do we respond to that? because there's actually some piece of that that's a little bit attractive, a little bit on point. In a certain context, it is not just true, but very true. We're not trying to, it's not our job to change people. Even standing up here, sharing God's word with you, I can't change you. God could use me, perhaps, as a vehicle for Him to change you, but it's not my job to change you. So in that sense, It's true, but what was the Apostle Paul doing on Mars Hill when he was talking to the Greeks who were the religious influencers of their day? Wasn't he trying to maybe convince them that biblical truth is important, that Christ is truly God? You know, that tomb you have or that, you know, that memorial you have for the unknown God. I know who that God is, let me talk to you. Was he trying to persuade them and change their mind about something? I would say yes, he was. And shouldn't every Christian have as their agenda glorifying God? Ms. Schacht says don't have an agenda. I beg to differ. We should absolutely have an agenda to glorify God in all that we do and say, always. Shifting from the Jesus character to the father character, Papa, Just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean that I orchestrate the tragedies. Don't ever assume that I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes. This is a bugaboo for a lot of people. I've actually done some radio shows on this topic. And I've only had a handful, I've been doing the show for 18 years, I've only had a handful of times when people got visibly angry during the show. And this was one of the topics that caused that. Somebody's face got beet red when anybody would dare to say that some tragedies might be God acting. But sometimes God does cause tragedy, for sure. I already mentioned, I think, Sodom and Gomorrah. The plagues of Egypt. Sometimes he does bring tragedy. What's that? Oh, man does too. Well, I get it, but how would you explain the plagues in Egypt? I'm not saying that God didn't create these things, but I'm just saying that man is the basis for most destruction. I just didn't see, I didn't take anything that you're saying from the shack that, you know, what I took from it was forgiveness and the Trinity and a man that learned forgiveness. I didn't, I didn't tear it apart, I didn't tear it down because, you know, at the end of the day, if you live across, that's where we make it. And this man was a great book. It could have brought somebody, this book could actually bring somebody to I don't disagree that God could use the shack to bring, I think he probably has used the shack to bring people to an understanding of Christ. Yeah, and I don't know, you probably haven't heard the different messages I've shared. The first couple of messages that I shared here when I was talking about the shack, I went out of my way to draw some attention to the better elements of the shack. And there's a lot to like there. But there are so many, my concern is there are so many problems and issues that are invisible to most people. And my concern is a lot of people can be moved to, oh, I like this god of the shack. never coming to realize that the God of the shack is not the God of the Bible. And I mentioned the Trinity. That's actually the worst point in the shack. The shack gets the Trinity completely wrong. It's loaded with multiple intertwining heresies that have been rejected by the church since its founding. That's one of the challenges. That's why I'm here doing what I'm doing. And like I said, it's not my job to change anybody's mind or persuade somebody. I'm just trying to share the truth and give a deeper insight into what's going on in the shack. And people will deal with that what they will. And for the record, I said this, the second sermon that I shared here on the shack, I went on my way to say that my wife actually, she would agree with more with you. She's like, I didn't take it that way. I didn't see the problem. I saw a lot of good in it. And there is a lot of good, but there's so much danger mixed in with that good. And I'm just trying to draw her attention because these things in the shack, They're in the world. And if we can see them better in the shack, we can see them better in the world. And then we can offer a soft, gentle correction to somebody when they say something that's docetic, or something that's, I'm gonna get into this, modalistic. We can say, I hear what you're coming from, but that's not actually what the Bible teaches, and you can do it as a friend. So that's the purpose here. So I'm not, anybody who's a big fan of the Shaq book or the movie, I'm not trying to make you feel like, oh, I'm horribly guilty and a bad Christian because I liked it. That's not the point. I am trying to draw attention to the fact that I'm willing to bet, I've shared things about the Shaq with, at this point, probably, well, not counting the radio, hundreds of people, counting the radio, thousands of people. And I promise you, I was sharing stuff that people did not catch on their own until somebody took the time, and it took me time. I didn't catch all these things the first time through. I realized early on in the book that it was a problem. I started taking notes, and then I read it again, and I went through it again, and I started looking, and I stopped giving as much credit of benefit of the doubt. I said, OK, if I don't give it, where is he? And pieced it all together. And then what cinched it for me, to be honest, when I talked to the author for two and a half hours. Then I knew my assumptions about where he was coming from were right. So that's all I can say about that. But anyway. In the interest of time, I'm gonna move forward. We can talk more afterwards if you want. I'm certainly open to doing that. Where am I? Max says that he likes Jesus, but he doesn't like Papa. And Papa blames the, quote, religious folk, because they created a stern God, the Father, and a comforting God, Jesus. But the New Testament doesn't present two different gods. God's character doesn't change. And to be honest, you can make an argument that the God of the Old Testament is, an overabundance of patience with people who are constantly in rebellion with him and against him. And anybody who thinks that Jesus is all, you know, fairy dust and pixies has not listened carefully to what he says in the gospels or what is said in the book of Revelation. He is a warrior king, and we need to remember that. There are not two different gods, an Old Testament God and a New Testament God. We wanna be clear on that. The prophet character says, we were all in him, meaning they were all in Jesus. So the shack is teaching that the entire Trinity became man. but only the Son takes on human nature. The Father and the Spirit do not, according to the Bible. Page 192, Papa says, quote, we are now fully human. We, all three persons of the Trinity are fully human. And nine pages later, Papa says, I am truly human in Jesus. Papa is, Papa was in Jesus, Papa, the Son. The Father sends the Son, the Son takes on a human nature, the Father does not. That is like boilerplate Christianity 101 stuff, and the shack sadly gets it wrong. This idea of mixing up the characters and of the, mixing up the persons of the Bible, treating them as characters and characterizations. Last week I used a fancy term. It's, the fancy term there is civilianism, more commonly known as modalism. If you get the Trinity wrong, you don't have Christianity. You might have Islam. You might have Mormonism. You might have lots of different things. You do not have biblical Christianity if you lose the Trinity. Page 194, the book quotes Bruckminster Fuller. I don't know if anybody knows who Bruckminster Fuller is. I had to look this one up because I wasn't sure, like, why is he quoting this guy? Apparently he's known for having revised scripture with science and a secular definition of divinity. And his quote is that God is a verb. This is kind of like Star Wars, God is a force, God is an action, but an action isn't a thing, right? An action is something that is performed by a personal being. God acts, God does, God performs things that we would call verbs, but God himself is not a verb. And so this depersonalizes God. which undercuts an awful lot of other things the shack says. The shack is inconsistent, that's the problem. There are elements in the shack that's like, oh yeah, that's great. But then five pages later, it's saying something that completely contradicts what was said five pages earlier, and it's like, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth, and that is where we can have some problems. The quote is even more extensive, actually. It says, I am a verb, my very essence is a verb. That's not true, according to the Bible. If it is true, then the Bible is wrong. And that's not a place I would want to stand. Now, again, here's a positive from the shack. I'm not doing as much positive here because I'm trying to highlight things that we should be paying better attention to and making better note of. But page 202, Paul Young, he accurately says that only Jesus has successfully lived a life fully obedient to the law. And that is absolutely true. Let that one hang for a minute. None of us is absolutely fully obedient to the law. Christ was and is, and that's why we're dependent on him. And the book actually says that's why Jesus fulfilled all of it for you, so that's good. One of the challenges, given the broader context of what's going on in the book, though, with a lot of leanings towards universal salvation, I gotta wonder what he meant by you. Does he mean you, figuratively, everybody, the entire human race? Does he mean it more narrowly, just the body of believers? Does he mean it specifically to the individual, Mac, who's being addressed? I'm not sure. I'll leave that one hanging in there and readers of the book can make up their own mind what they think's going on there. Sarayu, that's the name, the character's name of the Holy Spirit. And she says that humans like the law. I'm not sure that's true, that humans don't tend to like the law actually, but says humans like the law because quote, it grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. This is kind of, you hear this in a different phraseology today, right? Judge not lest ye be judged, is kind of what's being said here. But we've already talked about it is important for us to make biblical judgments. The Holy Spirit character goes on to speak against, quote, responsibility and expectation. But our responsibility and expectation is bad. And she says, quote, I have great fondness for uncertainty. If you read the Epistles of John, the Apostle John couldn't disagree more with this. It's all about certainty and having confidence that we know the truth as believers in Christ. The Holy Spirit does not have great fondness for uncertainty, according to Scripture. Papa says, nothing is ritual. I don't know, can you think of any rituals? We had the Lord's Supper last week, that's a ritual. But not according to the shack, the Lord's Supper is not a ritual because on 236 it says, without any ritual, without any ceremony, they savored the warm bread and shared the wine. So it's going out of its way to make it seem as though ritual and ceremony are bad things when they're not. They're God-ordained, Christ-instituted things. They're good. There's a strong point made on page 213 where, Saryu says, each relationship between two persons is absolutely unique. You love each person differently because of who they are and the uniqueness that they draw out of you. And the more you know another, the richer the colors of the relationship. Now there's a lot of good there, but the absolutely unique is a little bit problematic. We can have unique aspects to our relations, but an absoluteness to the uniqueness. If we were absolutely unique, we could not communicate. We've got to have some common ground to stand on. This is actually important. You might hear some people say that God is completely other. He's wholly, 100% other. If that was true, he couldn't communicate with his creation. There's got to be a touch point. There's got to be something that we have in common. In that example, God is a communicator, we're communicators. We have that in common. We're not absolutely unique, so we've got to be careful of absolute kinds of language. Mac has anger at his father throughout the story because his father abused him, so that's understandable. What's discouraging to me as a Christian is that the father is portrayed in the pages of the shack as a Christian believer who abused his son horribly, like his whole childhood. That's not the behavior of a Christian. A father like that would face church discipline where I preach. Page 224 says, son, you need to speak it, to name it. Boy, doesn't that sound like name it, claim it, theology, and practice? If you don't know what that is, you can ask me later. We don't have time to get into that now. Two pages later, Papa says, forgiveness does not excuse anything. Hmm. Doesn't mean that what was done was right and okay, that it was done, but actually forgiveness does excuse, right? You're free to go, you're excused. If it doesn't mean that, what does forgiveness mean? I'm not gonna hold it against you anymore. You're free to go. That's exactly what forgiveness means. Matt forgives the killer, this is on page 227, and then says, so is it all right if I'm still angry? And Papa responds, absolutely. When God forgives us, is he still angry with us? That should be our standard, I think. There's universalism throughout the shack, unfortunately. It says, quote, when Jesus forgave those who nailed him to the cross, they were no longer in his debt nor mine. In my relationship with those men, I will never bring up what they did or shame them or embarrass them. And the thing that worries, one, shame can be a good thing. It can be a useful tool. I think that we should feel shame sometimes. That's what can lead us to repentance. And again, is this talking about just at the cross? So I want just about those people who were there in that moment to talk about, it was fuzzy to me, that's why I mentioned it. Mack retrieves the dead body of his daughter, and as he carries her, the shack says on page 230, quote, he knew that the real Missy wasn't there. Do you recognize the problem with that? This one could be a little sneaky. He's carrying his dead daughter's lifeless body, right, and says, I know that's not really her. The problem is it is really her. Our bodies are really us. Our spirit is really us. Now the body absent the spirit is an incomplete iteration of us, but that's why we should treat the bodies of the dead with respect. It's really them. It's not wholly them, but the spirit that leaves the body that goes to be with Jesus in heaven, is that really them? Or is it not really them because they don't have a body anymore? The spirit is really us, the body is really us. The body is so important that we get new ones, or renewed ones. I really want to think about that. We get glorified bodies at the end. Our bodies are intricately intertwined with who we are and what we are to be as humans. Mac is given the choice of going to heaven towards the end of the story or staying on earth. And he chooses to reject heaven and stay on earth. And he is commended by the God characters saying that everything he does on earth is important. So he really should stay on earth. And in fact, everything he does on earth is universe altering, it says. To die is gain, to live is Christ. Sarajevo says, if anything matters, then everything matters. Everything does matter, in a sense. And since anything is part of everything. But this is like a bumper sticker kind of a thing, and I draw attention to this only because there's so many of these trite little bumper sticker phrases throughout the book. And I think we can all pray to think, oh, that's clever. And then the very next page, there's something that's not quite so clever, and it's insidious, and you're distracted by the cleverness and the pleasantness of the read. Page 237, which is very close to the end of the book, earthly existence is thought of as, quote, the unreal world. Is our earthly existence unreal? No. And if it were, then why would Mack be commended for choosing to stay on earth in the unreal rather than going to heaven where apparently it's real? See the logical inconsistency. Second to last page of the shack, 247, it says, perhaps if some of it is not actually true in one sense, it is still true nonetheless, if you know what I mean. And this comes up, like I said, it's the second to last page of the book, and it feels like a CYA moment. I'll cover your assumptions moment in the book. You know, maybe it doesn't really mean what you think it means. And that's why I said I was giving him the benefit of the doubt until I talked to him for two and a half hours. And I asked him point blank questions about this, and he confirmed my suspicions. And last thing I'm gonna say, the Shack's main character is told, you are a glorious, destructive mess, Mackenzie, but you're not here to repent. I don't love the language of glorious destructive mess because that feels to me like it's minimizing a little bit the idea of sin that's deserving of judgment, which is why Christ paid the penalty of a brutal death on a cross. However, we are glorious, we're made in God's image, and to the point that was made earlier, we do a lot of destructive things and we're a mess. So that's true as far as it goes. But what's the answer to that? According to the shack, the answer is you do not need to repent. But we know from scripture that the answer is we all need to repent. Anyway, I've clearly ruffled at least one person's feathers, probably some others that weren't as bold to say so in the moment. If you've had your feathers ruffled, I welcome having an ongoing dialogue if you would like to. If you'd rather not, that's fine too. I'm just here to try to point things out so that at the very least, maybe we collectively would do a better job of looking at things, not just at face value, but what's the agenda? Because you write a book and you produce a movie, you've got a world view you're advancing. And the author, William Paul Young, it says it right on the back of the book that his hope is that people would learn to know and understand more about God. He's writing a theological book trying to persuade people about what God is really like. And the problem is the God of the Bible is not really like the God of the shack. That's the problem. And if all of us would be like, oh yeah, I see that, that's the problem, but I'm gonna let that one go on. I see these four dozen problems in the book, but I've identified them all and I've processed them all and so I'm good, I wouldn't be worried. But the fact that we collectively as a body, the people I interact with, almost nobody identified almost any of them. And as a pastor, that bothers me. It makes me wonder if me and people like me are doing our job well enough. We should be able to pick out at least a few of them and go on to the pastor and say, on page 117, it says this. Is that what the Bible teaches? Nobody who's read the shack before talking to me and then come to me has asked me that kind of question. We're not noticing these things and we've got to get better at it. That's all I'm saying. So with that said, let's rise and sing our final hymn for the evening. It is 553, Battle Hymn of the Republic. 553. My eyes shall see the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is coming out of the vintage where the branch will never store. He is the faithful Lord, without his tear will most restore. His truth is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, hallelujah! His God is marching on! I have seen Him in the watchtowers of a hundred circling camps. He is known to ever falter, and He pleases to dance. I can read His righteous sentence violently at the glaring glance. His faith is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. His God is marching on. He has sounded forth the trumpet, that shall never sound retreat. He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be gentle with my feet! Our God is marching on! Glory, glory, hallelujah Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Our God is marching on ♪ ♪ In the beauty of the lily ♪ ♪ Christ was born across the sea ♪ ♪ With the glory in his bosom ♪ ♪ That transfigures you and me ♪ ♪ As he died to make them holy ♪ ♪ Let us live to make them free ♪ Our God is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Gloria in excelsis Deo. For God is marching on. Everyone can be seated for just a moment. Before we depart, I was sharing in the parking lot the last time I was here that I've been talking to professing Christians and it's been a method for sharing truth is a newer method for me and asking them, so you're a Christian? In like 60 seconds or less, tell me the gospel. I've had one person do kind of an okay job and I've had one person now do a pretty good job Everybody else, dozens and dozens of people, has not done very well. So, my parting gift for the evening to you is a little memory device that might help you know how to share the gospel more effectively, efficiently, and with more confidence. Think about the story arc of the Bible, the redemptive history story arc. If you can think about the historical sequence of events, it will help you share the gospel in any circumstance. You wanna talk to me more about how that is later on when we leave, I'd be glad to give you some practical examples of that. First thing that happens is God creates. So that's the first word, creation. That's chapter one and two of Genesis, right? What happens in chapter three? the fall. So creation, fall. What's the solution to the fall? Redemption at the cross. So creation, fall, redemption. What happens after redemption at the cross? The Holy Spirit indwells the believer. They progress in their sanctification, living to bring a life of glory to God. And so there's a restoration, a personal restoration, a relational restoration, a community restoration, ultimately a worldwide restoration. So that fourth word, restoration. And then at the end, the very end of, human history I go, or not human, but this aspect of creation history is glorification, where Christ returns in glory, and we all spend eternity with him with renewed, glorified bodies, and that is the great hope we all pine for, yearn for, it's why we say, Maranatha, Lord, come quickly. So, creation, fall, redemption, restoration, glorification, if you can remember those five things, I promise you if you can get into a conversation that lasts 10, 12, 15 minutes, sometimes you have to look for an opportunity so it's not forced, but if you can talk to somebody for let's say 15 minutes. You, and you're listening for it, you're trying to find a way to bring up creation, fall, redemption, restoration, glorification ideas and bring them into the conversation. You have a natural in for sharing the gospel. So far I have had a natural in to sharing the gospel with every single person that I've talked to for the last year. using this memory device. It is really changed for the better by ability to evangelize. So I share that with you. Creation, fall, redemption, restoration, glorification. Those are the five words. You can change the words if you want, but the idea is those five elements that are redemptive history. So anyway, that's my parting gift for the evening. We can all, I think, we stand for this part, right? The Alleluia. We're gonna sing the Alleluia chorus before we depart for the evening. Alleluia, Alleluia Alleluia, Alleluia Alleluia, Alleluia Make God's blessing be with you as your recognition fuels. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.