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Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast, where we're all about providing sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Costi Hinn, and on today's episode, I want to talk to you about guarding your heart in the midst of what you could call guarding the flock. Now, I know everybody's not a pastor, and y'all don't think all the time, I gotta guard the flock, I've got to guard the flock like a church leader. But a lot of Christians, if not all Christians, at least the ones I talk to, are passionate about the truth and have a very common question. We get this a lot at For the Gospel. I was just sitting at breakfast with some brothers a week ago, and we were talking about speaking the truth in love, and the question inevitably comes up, and we always love to sharpen each other, you know, how are you approaching this? And these brothers weren't pastors, just great guys in their twenties, hoping to stand for truth while at the same time win souls. So the balance I want to strike here is clarity for two sides of the church. There is the side that thinks, I don't think we should be calling stuff out, you know, stay in your lane. And those who think, hey, I think we should spend the bulk of our time blasting heretics, everybody's a heretic. So you got the do nothing softies and the do-it-all the time angries. Let's call the two fighters in the ring by those terms. But could there be a balance here? I believe so, not because Costi's word, but because God's word. Scripture gives us a balance. So you don't need to wonder, well, should I say anything? Or, you know, am I supposed to say it all the time? I'm aiming for balance in my life. I'm aiming for balance in our church. We are here for the gospel. I'm sure you are too. So let's approach this topic under that header. Guarding your heart while guarding the flock or guarding the truth. We are supposed to, the way Paul said to the Thessalonians, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint-hearted, and help the weak. But it's tough. Yeah, people get over the top with this sometimes, or they avoid it altogether. So here's the two ditches now. If you got the two fighters in the ring, like I mentioned, the do nothing softies and the do it all the time angries. Let me give you the two ditches that Satan wants you and I to fall into on either side of the discernment quote horse, if you will. He doesn't care which side you fall off into as long as you fall off. Here's ditch number one. You got the cage stage Calvinist. Everyone who doesn't hold the limited atonement is a heretic. You know everybody, but but but you is a heretic. And even the good guys, yeah, they're just probably playing nice to get a book deal. You know, that's the cage stage Calvinist approach. Your church, this is a caricature, you know, has got 20 people left in it because you've run the rest out of the town, but you know, it's real revival because you trust in the sovereignty of God to elect people under salvation anybody, any they don't like it, they can take a hike, and that attitude, the bravado. You are aggressive. You are in cage stage, which means it's best to cage you for a little while. Everybody's music is too contemporary, and if anybody dares to raise a hand or get excited in church, you know, the ushers are gonna flag them for 15 yards of excessive celebration. That's the cage stage, Calvinist. It's a caricature. I know some of that's hyperbole, but it sets the stage. You've got these guys that are just angry at everybody. Everybody's wrong except for them. And look, they're not always pastors. There's a lot of people are picking on their pastor all the time. They always poking and criticizing and asking questions, not in a good way that keeps a leader accountable, but in this suspect way, questioning everything, as though they're right. You know, they read a blog article and now they're an expert on church leadership. They heard a John Piper sermon and now you need to preach like him, or they, you know, read one book from John MacArthur and now they think that they're gonna teach you how to be the pastor. There's that culture in the church. We want to be careful with that when it comes to discernment. Pastors are growing and learning, and oftentimes it's the guys that are steady eddy in the pulpit and as a pastor who have already learned that you don't get very far just running around angry all the time as a church leader. It's a marathon, not a sprint. So those are usually the guys telling the cage stage Calvinists to calm down. Ditch number two. You've got the overtolerant antinomian. Okay, antinomian, we've put this on the blog before in the articles about theological terms. Antinomian is anti-nomos, the Greek word for law. You're against rules. You got the overtolerant person that says, Hey, I look, I don't know. We know middle of the road on everything. This guy's never seen a false teacher in his life. Even the bad guys have good in them. They just need to be loved on and accepted, and we just need to draw the good out of them. These are the people that say, you know, I sin too, so I can't call anybody else out for their false teaching. It's the Joel Osteen on Larry King, you know. I don't know. I don't know if I could say that. I know about me, I don't know, all they ought to know stuff. Well, this is gonna get us in some trouble. Because when the pastor is a charlatan, and when false teachers are circling like sharks in the water, and we have leaders or people who are over-tolerant and they don't want to call anything out, I just stay in my lane. Well, now the devil's having a party because we're impotent. Nobody's doing anything. So the two ditches, you got angry cage stage Calvinist who thinks everyone's a heretic, and then you've got the overtolerant antinomian who says, Well, I don't want to call anything out, let's just all get along. Both are a ditch Satan wants you to fall off into. So I want to walk you through two commands from Scripture that are to the church, and certainly that includes church leaders in the body, and all of us, so you have practical application on this topic, whether you are a pastor, a leader, or a church member. Here's principle number one or command number one, based on what scripture teaches. The church must carefully guard the flock. You cannot be over tolerant, you cannot look past sin, and you cannot turn a blind eye to false teaching. Acts twenty, verse twenty eight. Paul says to the elders there, wolves are going to come from the inside. So you need to shepherd the flock. And he says this line in that passage that the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. The Holy Spirit has appointed us. And so if you're a young, aspiring church leader or you are a church leader, here's the deal. We don't own this thing and we don't make the rules. God does, and he calls his men to be overseers and then commands that you shepherd the flock faithfully and you guard it from wolves. Second Corinthians 11, verse 13 reminds us that false prophets are gonna look good, sound good, they're gonna make people feel good, just like Satan, disguised as an angel of light, his prophets, who are false, are gonna disguise themselves as good guys, and so they don't show up at the foot of your bed with a pitchfork and a red tail like the devil, you know, saying, Here I am to deceive you. No. They are smooth talkers. They secretly introduce destructive heresies like 2 Peter 2 describes. And if you want a full chapter on false teaching, read that chapter. It'll educate you in ways that you may not have been educated before on this topic. Titus 1 9 says that we are, as pastors, church leaders, elders, supposed to provide sound doctrine and rebuke people who contradict it. So there's no way around that. Second Timothy 4 2, preach the word. Romans 16, verses 17 and 18, you and I, we're supposed to point out, literally mark the Greek word scope, think of a scope, put the crosshairs on, if you will, dangerous deceivers, people who are dividing the body of Christ, not by calling out truth, but by preaching that which is contrary to what Christ taught. Ephesians 5 11. We expose evil deeds. We don't participate them in them. We expose evil deeds of darkness. And then Paul names names, by the way, in 1 Timothy 1 19 20, 2 Timothy 1 15, 2 17, and 4 10. Names galore. So what do we do with that? Well, we need to call things out as they are, and sometimes we're gonna name names like Paul did. There's an article I read not long ago by John Piper. He gives five factors to consider when deciding whether to name a false teacher publicly. So this would help you who might think, and me as well, as a pastor in a pulpit each week. Am I supposed to blast everybody every week? Is like the intro to the sermon every week? Now, this is the warning section of the sermon. I'm gonna name the three people around town you shouldn't be listening to. Or do you never say it is like once a year? Do you never say anything on certain Sundays because you know you got visitors at Easter? I wouldn't overthink it. I would just look at scripture and then think through practical questions. Here's five from John Piper. He says you should consider the seriousness and deceitfulness of the error. He's obviously thinking through the lens of scripture where John deals with strong things with first and second and third John because there were heretics attacking the church and attacking Christology. Paul, same thing with the Colossians. Paul again in the pastoral letters, that's where he named names. Number two, the size of the audience, is it growing? Is there a lot of influence? Very important to consider. If somebody's just kind of running around causing trouble on their own, if they're messing with your church, say something. But publicly, why would I say anything about a Stephen Furtick, a Michael Todd, a Joel Osteen? And then why would I recently even say something about Jenny Allen? I didn't call her a heretic or a false teacher. I just said it's the reason Michael Todd's antics, why I'm concerned about if gathering and some of that, because you've got some preachers who are doing crazy things on their own platforms and then being platformed by a ministry by Jenny Allen like If Gathering, and that is reaching massive amounts of people and women no less. So we've got influential mothers, sisters, teachers, next generation women being shaped by the teaching of men like Michael Todd, who spit on their hand and rub it on people's faces, and a host of other things, by the way, even if he apologizes for that. And following women like Bianca Orloff, who make very inappropriate statements to try to be funny in her pulpit as a pastor, she calls herself, of a church in Orange County. These are concerning things. Are they all just heretics? We just blast them all all the time. No, but the size of the audience is growing, and no way am I gonna sit around silently and say nothing when mass amounts of people, women, are flocking to it. And I've had wonderful conversations with brothers. I sent Jenny Allen my cell phone number, said, Call me anytime, we can talk, talk to other great guys. You guys know I've been on his podcast before. Jonathan Pakluta, who I love dearly, is a brother. He's gonna preach there. We had a good conversation about it. I'm talking to brothers and sisters, I'm talking to people behind the scenes, but no way am I not gonna say anything publicly, at least saying we should be careful. And if people want to say be careful of me, do it. Look at my teaching. What am I teaching? Scrutinize it. Are there shenanigans? Are there a bunch of, you know, woke people that are saying weird stuff and accusing white people of racism when they're not racists? Are we am I spitting on people? Am I driving Bentleys and beamers and building twice big houses because I'm getting lots of money? No. And if I do, then fact check me. Do that for all of us. Very important. Third, the duration of their ministry. Did they make one blunder or are they constantly doing it? Is this a repeated pattern? The vulnerability of the people for whom you are responsible is another one. That's number three and four. So has this been going on for a while? Is it like, you know, my uncle Benny who says really crazy stuff, then repents, really crazy stuff, repents. Todd White says crazy stuff, repents, and then goes back to it. Bethel constantly doing things, and then Bill Johnson says, Hey, they're just signs that make you wonder, or I can't control where everyone's doing things and why they're doing it. Over and over and over and over again, and people get mad at guys like John MacArthur or you know, Piper, other guys, if they say stuff about certain movements. Everybody's up in arms. Oh, that's all they ever do. No, they've just consistently pointed out things that are repeatedly coming up and causing problems in the church overall, locally and globally. That's good and healthy. The vulnerability of the people for whom you are responsible. When you're a shepherd of a flock, you have a responsibility. People are vulnerable. I heard one guy recently say, ah, I don't really deal with much stuff with uh the chaos of, you know, Hillsong or Bethel or those, because it's not really affecting our young people. I think that's a dangerously ignorant statement to make because all our young people are aware of Bethel and Hillsong. And if they weren't, now they are because there's a Discovery Channel documentary that's out. We need to at least be aware and have answers for our people. Number five, Piper says the role you have in influencing shepherds who really need to be discerning for who the false teachers are. If you're a leader maker or a leader of leaders, a servant of leaders, well then you have been given tremendous influence. And here would be my issue with leaders and major influencers who say, you know, I don't get into all this because I'm a bridge builder. I'm just trying to build bridges. Okay, you're a bridge builder with tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of followers on Instagram and elsewhere. The Lord has obviously allowed, for whatever reason, you to have a ton of influence. You have a responsibility not to use that for your next book deal or try to build bridges and keep everybody happy. You answer to Christ and you have an influence over shepherds and leaders. So why don't you infuse some discernment in their life and in their minds so that their churches and exponentially people upon people upon people in their spheres of influence would be more discerning, which is gonna lead them closer to the Lord because they're gonna be walking in more truth, less confused in today's culture because of your servant leadership. Isn't that so much better than people pleasing the crowd so you get another conference invite? I think so. Do God's work. You're gonna answer to his son one day. When you do name a name, it's best to do it in a setting where you're doing more than name dropping, like maybe a podcast like this where we talk a little bit about why and the concerns. That again, not everybody's a heretic, we're not just sling in mud. But there's some wisdom here assessing, discerning. And then as a ministry and as a person, you want the truth of the gospel to be so clear that your ministry speaks for itself. You know, you can't preach enough negative sermons to stay ahead of the trends today, and you don't have to. The best protection against the darkness of error is the light of truth, so speak the truth. And so understand there is a command, but or and church leaders and the church must also guard their heart. You don't just guard the flock, you gotta guard your heart. Ephesians four fourteen to sixteen reminds us the purpose of rebuking false teachers so people aren't flying everywhere, getting blown around by every wind of doctrine. Ephesians 4 15 says speaking the truth in love. So love compels us. Jude 3, he says it's basically out of a painful compulsion, not prideful combativeness, that I have to earnestly urge you or urge you to earnestly contend for the faith. First Corinthians 13 speaks of love. Do you hope, bear, believe, and endure all things? I want to. I hope we all do. The goal is to see these incredibly gifted communicators and really incredible people from a talent and influence standpoint use their platform to platform Christ. Or if you will, like a John the Baptist, point to Christ. No, I'm not the guy, he's the guy. Oh got it, you you're gonna look at me because cause you respect me and I'm influential? Awesome. Now look at me, ready? Okay, now look at him. So anytime attention's going on you, you're a mirror, you reflect it back upward to Christ. That's the goal. That's love. And that's what we want for these people to be saved, or if they are saved and they're playing the game of Christian influencer, to point to Christ and leverage the platform for his glory. First Corinthians 4 5 would remind us to be very careful when assessing heart and motives. It's very, very slippery to begin assessing why. I don't know why everybody does things. I know that the Bible says some will do it for greed. I know that Philippians 1, Paul says whether in pretense or in truth, so long as Christ is preached, and so I may have some concerns about people, but in the end, you could be content to know they'll be in heaven with us, and whether in pretense or in truth, as long as Christ is preached, they'll answer to the Lord. You may want to encourage people to steer clear of some of their shenanigans, but in the end, you can rest your heart, knowing that the Lord will deal with their heart. Second Timothy 4 14, Paul mentions Alexander the coppersmith who did him much harm in ministry. There'll be people that harm you, you want to harm them back. He says the Lord will repay him according to his deeds, so leave vengeance with the Lord. And then situational wisdom matters. You know, Jude 17 to 23, he gives three categories. You got doubters, deceived, and dangerous people. You got the doubters who are wavering, he says, have mercy on them. You got others, he says, snatch them out of the fire, they're deceived. Then you got dangerous people, people that you keep arm's length with, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh, he says. Yeah, use situational wisdom. You guard your heart. You don't always just give up on people and go, ah, they're crazy, I need to stay away from them. But also maybe you're not getting steak dinners with a really blatant heretic who's very dangerous and now begins to pollute your reputation and your life. You gotta use wisdom. A key question we ought to ask. Do you want to win arguments or do you want to win people? I don't care if I'm right, you're right, who's right. As long as people are being won. It's not a race or a competition to see who could be the most right or the first right person. You know, I called that out first. There's a lot of stuff with a social justice now going around. You get these people that say, you know, I've been calling this out for years. They want their credit. Who cares about credit so long as the truth about Christ is bursting onto the scene? All of our duty is to speak the truth. Maybe like the parable The Vineyard Workers, you're a little late to the game. That's okay. Today's a great day to start. Warren Wearsby says one of my favorite quotes Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy. I love what Chuck Swindall said once. He said, We could be right, but we don't need to be ugly about it. Is that your desire to be right and then not to be ugly about it? Do you want to win people? Do you want to see movements like what would happen if Steven Furtick started preaching faithfully? If you would have a hard time with that, check your heart. If Jenny Allen turned the if gathering into a world-changing ministry filled with amazing teachers who were reliable, no shenanigans, would you be mad? Would you be suspect? I don't trust her, or or would you genuinely be pumped? Check your heart. We want to be really careful. The goal is not to crush people, the goal is to see people use their influence, leverage it for God's glory, and have his sheep led to reliable sources of truth so they can grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we're going for for the gospel. When we call things out, that's what we're going for. Let us fade into the background, who cares? As long as people are being reached and using their gifts for the glory of God. My prayers this episode would help you who are soft in calling out error and standing up for truth to wake up a bit. And if you're an influencer listening to this, wake up. Let's go. Heaven's coming. Time is short. Use your influence for the glory of God. Do your job and then die well. And for some of you, you're constantly setting everyone on fire without thinking through your actions and words, or you just yell about everything and you never explain why, and you really find it hard to even imagine being pumped if a false teacher or a person who's not exactly using their platform right now the way you would prefer starts playing for the right team. You wouldn't be happy about that. Hey, time to wake up too. We're in a fight for truth. We want to walk in love. We're better together than we are apart, and that's not some fake building bridge sentiment. You know, the devil loves unity that ignores truth. We're not going for that. But wake up. We're better together. Guard the flock and guard your heart. Thank you for listening to the Further Gospel Podcast. To check out free resources, meet our team, or set up a monthly gift if you want to help us keep pumping out free resources. Go to furthegospel.org. And if you haven't already, follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter, and drop us a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'll be back next Monday with another episode. For now, keep on living for the gospel.