In his sermon 'The Not-So-Great Commission,' Kevin Swanson emphasizes the importance of the law of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ and the dangers of separating faith and works in teaching the gospel. Swanson argues that true faith in Jesus must be accompanied by obedience to God's commandments and that the message of the gospel must include repentance and remission of sins. He also highlights the interconnected nature of evangelism and discipleship, as seen in Paul's message in Acts chapter 20, where both faith and repentance are central. Swanson stresses the need to teach the commandments of Jesus in the gospel message and to apply the gospel effectively in different contexts and situations.

Good afternoon. Everybody get a good lunch? Ready to curl up in the sun, go to sleep for a couple hours? All right. Well, let's go ahead and open with a word of prayer, and then we'll get on with things.

Father, thank you for bringing us here today. We pray you would give us a vision for our own families, for our own lives, that we would find how we fit into your commission, God. We pray you would strengthen our families. We pray you would give us a vision that would extend to the generations. And we pray a blessing upon all the other speakers speaking this hour as well.

God, that your kingdom would come, that there would be a great vision that would extend all the way around the world to hundreds of thousands of people as a result of the messages taught at this conference. We pray your blessing on the NCFIC and Scott Brown and all the others that have put to work into this in Jesus name Amen Well brothers and sisters I trust you're all here to get a vision a vision for what God wants for your own families It began for us many many years ago. I've been involved in the Great Commission myself for about 40 years. I was raised in the mission field in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. My father was called to the mission field in 1969, and yet it was a full-orbed vision for my father because, initially, my father was headed for the Philippines, but at the very last moment, we had the tickets in hand at the very last moment, the mission board that was sending us at that point said that we would have to go to a boarding school.

The children would have to be sent to a boarding school in the Philippines. My father said, over my dead body is that gonna happen? I'm not sending my children away from me. And so in the end, they shifted him to Japan in order for him to be able to keep us at home and homeschool us there. So my father always put his family first.

This is very important for my father. He wanted a family integrated type of a ministry. And he saw that if we disintegrated the family, if we broke apart the father-son, father-daughter relationships, and we did what missions have been doing for the previous 150 years, we would see the kingdom of God languish. And so, my father made a very faith-filled decision not to go to the mission field until they were able to make an exception for us that they would be able to be homeschooled. Well, friends, that was about 40 years ago, and I remember passing out tracts at Japanese junior high and high schools.

I remember engaging the Great Commission at various levels myself, but always recalling that what was of essence was the requirement that Paul gives us in 1 Timothy 2, 3 and verses 5 and 6, that if a man cannot rule his household well, if he can't shepherd his own sheep in the home, how can he shepherd the Church of God? And this is the fundamental biblical social construct. If we cannot do the kingdom of God in our homes, if we're not faithful with first things first, then how in the world are we going to engage the kingdom of God in any other area? And my father took that very seriously. Now, I want to begin with the Great Commission.

Let me read it one more time to you. And there's a sense in which I think all of us that are speaking are coming at it from different angles, and we're bringing out this verse again and again. Hopefully nobody's getting tired of it because it is the Great Commission. Here it is from Matthew 28. 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 things "'that I have commanded you.

"'Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'" Well, this is really the commission that Jesus gives to us, but as we are taking on this commission, I hear that we are all to engage a message of some sort. Now, Jesus describes the message as whatsoever I have commanded you. That seems to be the message. And yet there is so much confusion today on what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. In fact, there's so much confusion that A couple of months ago, I was called into a meeting with three pastors from the same denomination, myself included, all from different reformed seminaries, and all of us seemed to have a different definition of the Gospel.

Now, is that scary? An objective person just looking at that saying, whoa, here is a group of people passionate about something called the Gospel, and yet there seems to be a fair amount of disagreement on what the Gospel is. Now, that does not scare you. It scares me. I mean, I'm amazed at the breakdown of the Christian faith in the present day.

In fact, my guess is there are people here in this congregation that do not agree entirely on what the gospel is. There's so much gospel confusion here. Obviously, the gospel includes whatsoever Jesus has commanded according to Matthew chapter 28. Hopefully, there is no disagreement on that, but my guess is there probably is disagreement. Now Jesus summarizes the Gospel again in Luke 24 where he says you are to teach a message of repentance and remission of sins.

Now evidently the gospel must include something about sin. So that's important. Now others have said the gospel does not include a message about law. In fact, this is very, very common today. This is where sort of the nub of the debate occurs.

This is the law of God tied into the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now if sin is defined as the law of God, if sin is the breaking of the law of God as John defines it in 1 John, then Jesus came to give us remission of sins as the forgiveness of our breaking of the laws of God. And he wants us to teach the remission of our breaking of the law of God and our repentance concerning sin or the breaking of the law of God. So in both cases in Luke 24, the law of God seems to play an important part in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now again, this is very controversial.

Not everybody agrees with this. People from the Gospel Coalition are telling us that our sanctification is getting to know our justification. That is, they don't want to define sanctification as the observing of the law of God, either because the gospel is confined to a message about justification. Now as it turns out, justification and sanctification are not to be separated according to the old reformed confessions and catechisms. Okay, you go back to the larger catechism, question 77, you're gonna find that our forefathers were horrified by the sort of approach to the gospel that is presented in the present day, where you've got grace and law fairly aggressively separated in the presentation of the message.

And as you separate grace and law, you also find a pretty hardcore separation between evangelism and discipleship. Faith and repentance. Let me ask you this. I've done a Google on this. How many repentance community churches are there in America?

Do you know how many faith community churches, how many faith Baptist, faith Presbyterian churches there are in America? Tens of thousands. How many repentance community churches are there in America? As far as I know, not one. Why is that?

Because the gospel of Jesus Christ in the estimation, in the perspective of the average person in America, is very skewed. Somehow faith and repentance are violently separated. In the area of child training we see this come up all the time and it has been devastating to the church, devastating to the family, to home schoolers all across America. I read from certain people who talk about our child's profession of faith, you're not to teach a lesson about faith until you've taught your children to obey. Some say you're not to teach obedience until your children have learned faith.

This is radical separation. It has nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the Bible doesn't know anything about it. As it turns out in the Bible, James chapter 2 and verse 26 says, for as the body without the Spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. It is impossible my friends, impossible to have a separation of faith and works and have anything there.

So therefore, in the liturgy of the church, in the presentation of the gospel message, when you say faith is over here and we're not going to get to works for another 20 years, friends, that's not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ is centered at the cross of Christ. There's no question about it. So please understand that we come to the cross of Jesus Christ as the woman who is at the feet of Christ. And the Pharisee looks at her and says, do you know who's there?

She is a great sinner. And Jesus said, yes. But the reason she loves so much is because she's been forgiven much. And the reason she's forgiven much is because she's sinned much. The goal in the presentation of the gospel in our homes all the time is to present the magnitude of the sin in your child's life or the people in your congregation.

If you go to a congregation where a pastor is preaching about the law of God. That makes a major portion of the message. He's showing the magnitude of the condition of the sinner and how they have fallen far short. Maybe they have clicked off a few things externally, but there are still issues within those people's lives where they have fallen far short of the expectations of God's law. And as you present that again and again, and you drive it home and the law of God is preached with great authority and huge convicting force, it slices through the marrow of the heart and it drives a conviction of sin where that person falls before the feet of Christ and receives the forgiveness and they know why the Son of God died on that cross.

They understand it. The reason why that Son of God was sent all the way from heaven to bear that sin is because of the severe violation of the holy requirements of God's law in your life, in His life, in her life. And then if they understand they've been forgiven much, they will love much. And then they will keep the commandments of God that is the same commandments they broke on the other side of the cross. So again and again, we bring the law of God together.

And we point out that they broke the law of God. We teach it with all the force we have. But we do it in the presence of the cross, where our people understand that there is a forgiveness, and they receive the forgiveness. And if they receive the forgiveness, they will love him and keep his commandments. It is impossible to know that you have been forgiven, and not love.

It is impossible. In other words, if you bifurcate the message and say, I'm gonna teach forgiveness, but no love for Christ. I'm gonna teach love for Christ, but no forgiveness. I'm going to teach the law of God, but not offer the forgiving merits of Christ's blood. Friends, you're going to get an imbalanced gospel either way.

Antinomian or legalistic, either way. But either way, it will seriously, seriously affect the message that you bring to your people. The law of God is so vitally important in the presentation of the gospel message. Now what's the difference between evangelism and discipleship then? Some people say, I'm an evangelist.

You know, discipleship happens later. Now here's one of the problems. If you separate faith and work, you teach a child nothing but externalistic obedience with no faith, no love for God, just externalistic obedience for the first four to five years of his life, but no faith, you teach him an important lesson. Son, live a life of faithlessness. Live a life without the love of God blazing in your heart, motivating you to do what you need to do, be a superficial, hypocritical, Pharisaical, legalistic loser.

That's what you're teaching. Friends, it's terrible when they separate faith and works. Terrible. Whatever you do, teach faith and works at the same time. You've broken the laws of God's son.

Why did you disobey mommy? And you ran in the street. You could have been killed. Mommy said, don't do that. It was a violation of the sixth commandment.

And you dishonored your mom and your dad in this and then you teach him the forgiveness of Christ you tell him yes you've you've broken that law 700 times I think we've been here before deja vu but let me say this son there's a reason why Jesus had to die because you are such a sinner. You're a sinner, you're a sinner, and he knows he's a sinner. Every time he hits that wall of the law of God, it pounds that point home again and again. He knows he's a sinner, But whatever you do, do not leave him there. Please don't leave him there.

No, you have to from the time he is six months old and he kicks a little bit while Mommy's trying to change the diaper. You tell him about Jesus. You tell him that Jesus died. You encourage him to love Jesus because he died for the bad things that he does. And then you teach him to love Jesus and keep his commandments.

See what happens again, when you teach evangelism is over here faith is over here and once you get converted you're gonna move away from faith town over to discipleship and discipleship is like six miles north hang a right you'll see it on the left and there's little works over there and they hang out in this discipleship conference, this discipleship movement, and after a while, guess what? They begin to live the life of works without faith, and legalism sets in. And so eventually their children get worn out with a message about work sans faith and they'll move back to Grace Town or Faithville and then they'll move to San Francisco and that's the end of it. This is American apostasy and it's happening all the time. It's happening to evangelicalism constantly because our fundamental idea of evangelism and discipleship is all messed up.

You say, well, what's the difference then between evangelism and discipleship? That people write me about this saying, really concerned. Like, you know, isn't there a role for evangelists? There is. But the difference between running into somebody on the street who has never heard the gospel, and your son that's been sitting in your house listening to the same message for 25 years or 14 years or whatever it's been, the difference between somebody in your church and somebody outside of the church who's never heard the word, comes in the word start.

You tell that person on the street, you're a sinner, start believing in Jesus and repenting of your sins. What do you tell your kids? What are you telling people in your churches? Keep on believing in Jesus and repenting of your sins. There is a difference between evangelism and discipleship.

And the word is start. Now some people are good at breaking the ice and using the word start. They're good at it, Start. I don't know, they're just really good with the word start. Start.

It's cool the way they do it. They've got a gift for the word start. Start. Believing in Jesus, repenting of Jesus. Just gifted at start.

Granted, not everybody's good at breaking the ice. You know what I'm talking about. But guys, listen, there's very little precious difference between somebody who can use the word start and somebody who can say, live the life of faith and repentance. Keep on believing. Grow in your love for Christ.

Grow in your understanding of the holiness of God, grow in your understanding of what Jesus did on the cross, grow in your love for God, grow in your obedience. Friends, that's the difference between evangelism and discipleship. Acts chapter 20, Paul sort of summarizes what he was doing. Again, it's good to get back to the Bible a lot. Because I don't know, something about our theological systems has really messed things up for us.

You got to get back to the Bible. What was Paul doing in Acts chapter 20? He spent three years in Ephesus. But what was he doing? Three years in Ephesus, what was he doing?

What was the message? Here's what the message is. This is Paul wrapping up three years of ministry, talking to the Ephesus elders in Acts chapter 20, testifying to the Jews and also the Greeks, repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith and repentance. Now repentance is God word.

Faith is Christ word. Have you ever run into somebody who said, we attend a Christ-centered church? Now, question for you. Is Paul Christ-centered or God-centered? Again, we're going from the Bible.

I know that's kind of a radical thing for some of us. It's cool, read it. Good stuff in it. Is Paul Christ-centered or God-centered? Everybody say yes, yes.

He's Trinitarian. Again, a shocker to some of us who've been attending the Christ-centered churches. The reason why people say we're Christ-centered is because they're trying to say we're all about faith, we're not about repentance. Because Faith is Christ-centered in its proximity. Repentance is God-centered in its proximity.

Paul happens to be God-centered and Christ-centered at the same time. So there's, again, in whatever we're getting in American evangelicalism, it's just weird stuff. Jesus wants us to teach the people to observe whatsoever he has commanded. Now, you say, well, what are we supposed to teach? What are the commands?

Here's a command that comes to mind. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Is that a command? You think somebody ought to keep that command? What do you think?

I have people in my church. They're having a hard time making it. They're struggling with sin, and trials, and tribulations, and the right perspectives, and their doubts, and everything else. But of course, they've been saved for 25 years. What do you think I taught them, this is about two weeks ago, when it was just crisis time in the lives of these people?

I looked this person in the eye and I told her, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. She said, what's good is that? I've been doing that for 25 years. I did it 25 years ago. I know, and you're having a really hard time with it right now.

See, the command is something they got to continue with. You say, what other commands are there? Well, I can think of a few others. Matthew chapter 5, whosoever therefore should teach men to break one of these least commandments in the Old Testament shall be considered least in the kingdom of heaven. So that would be a command of Jesus that we ought to be teaching.

Here's another one that comes to mind. Matthew chapter 15. Again, commands of Jesus that show up, and again, there's a lot of them, but I'm throwing out a few examples. Matthew chapter 15 and verse 5. Whosoever curses his mother and father shall be put to death.

Okay, that's a command of Jesus. He affirms it, he likes it, now shall we teach it? Here's another one that comes to mind, suffer not a which to live. A command of Christ. Now, yes, I know that not all of these are equally popular.

We were considering maybe taking one of these commands, suffer not a which to live, put it on a t-shirt, and walk into Salem, Massachusetts, when my family and I were visiting the East Coast a couple years ago. But I was thinking, you know, that's probably not going to be real popular in Salem, Massachusetts. You all follow me? Now, do you think that a command like that, I understand people hate the laws of God. And you start mentioning Matthew 15, or Exodus 21, suffer not a which to live, and people get very upset with you, but do you think that suffer not a which to live could have any ethical import whatsoever to a young child in a church today who is addicted to Harry Potter novels, for example?

Do you think it does? Do you think it has a force? Do you think maybe that's something we need to disciple the nations with in the present day? People love to sing about Jesus, but oftentimes, they hate his laws. Now, what's the problem?

Well, the problem is that the vast majority of American Christianity is not teaching them to observe what Jesus has commanded in his word. And so, we've got some work to do. I was heading down to Mexico last year. Been invited by Mike Richardson, a leader and a pastor down in Mexico. He works with the homeschoolers down there, but he works also with a lot of evangelism in the dangerous territories of northern Mexico where there's a great deal of drug warfare going on, he invited me down to work with him in the home school conferences, but also attend some of these...

Come to some of these cities and reach out to the leaders and talk to the military folks, and hopefully some of the banditos and other things, other folks down in Mexico. And I took a look at the city that he planned to visit, and it was Mier. It's the most dangerous city in Mexico. The higher number of people killed in Mier than any other city, in terms of percentage. More bullet holes, more dead bodies in Mier is the percentage of the city than any other city in all of Mexico.

So this is effectively the most dangerous city in the world right now, at least for the time being. And at least it was last year. And if you looked at all the pictures, I did some Google picture stuff and There were dead bodies everywhere. And so, you know, I wasn't thinking this would be the safest missionary journey, but Mike wanted me to help him with this outreach, and so I decided to go, and I made sure my life insurance had paid up, and my wife was a little concerned about it as well. I took my son with me, and he was willing to sort of take the risk, but we had a door open with the mayor of the city, and that's one of the main reasons we went.

We'd been helping somewhat with some physical needs for this particular city. And as we went down there, here I am in the most dangerous city in Mexico and bullet holes again everywhere. And I'm meeting with the pastor, first of all the last pastor who is still standing And about half the city is gone, but he's still there. One pastor still lives in the city. And we were able to make it to his house.

And we hunkered down in his church right next to his house. It was an assembly of God pastor. And I encouraged this man. Now, he said, it's very dangerous for you to be here. And we were talking in low-term tones, and he said, there's somebody about two houses down that could kill us.

There's another one about four houses down that could kill us. It's very dangerous for me to be talking to you. But we shared with him for about half an hour to an hour. Tears poured out his face as he talked about how many times his life had been threatened. At one point, the Banditos were going door to door and shooting every person in every house along the neighborhood, and he locked the door and he got down, and they were face down on the floor, and the bullets were flying through the door.

He was tempted to get up and try to stop it, but he could feel a hand on his chest, and it continued to press down upon him until the bad guys left, and that's when he got up and started pulling bullets out of the door. And he showed us some of the bullets that had come very, very close to killing his family. But there he was, And here I was in the most dangerous city in Mexico. I encouraged this man to disciple the men. Because what's the problem here?

What's going on in Mexico? What's the problem? If we're out to disciple the nations, how in the world are we going to rebuild the nations? This was the question that was affecting me as I'm sitting in this little hut in the most dangerous city in Mexico, where you have chaos and all kinds of anarchy all over the place, and I realized that the big problem is almost corruption is everywhere, and almost all of the politicians are on the take, and you never know who's on your side, who's not on your side, and pretty much everybody's on one side of the gangs or the other side of the gangs, and the gangs effectively own the economies in these cities in northern Mexico. So how in the world are we gonna rebuild the nations?

Again, it's time for the evangelicals to step up to the microphone and tell us, what do you tell these men? What do you tell them? And I said, what you need to do is disciple the men. You've got to disciple the men. He says, how do I do that?

I said, you bring them down every single week and feed them something and then give them the word of God. He said, I don't have enough meat for the barbecue. I gave them $2, 000. So you do it every single week for the next 52 weeks. And here are some books that you can use in discipling the men to be men of God and teaching the word of God as they sit in the house, as they walk, by the way, as they rise up, as they lie down, and teach them the commandments of God such that they know how to build an honest economy in this nation of Mexico, and it's gotta start with you, man.

You have got to disciple the men. And I don't care if you're in a war-torn area with bullets everywhere and blood flowing in the straits. You disciple the men. And I walked into the mayor's office. I got an hour with the mayor.

Now here I am, a man who lost his own son a year earlier, dead, kidnapped, murdered, and the last thing his son said to him was, Dad, I think you need to get involved in politics. So this man risks his life every day driving into this office. We're looking both ways, we have armed guards everywhere. Here I am, sitting in the most dangerous city in Mexico. God has opened the doors, enabled me to disciple a nation.

What do you tell him? Now what? Here's a man in the midst of chaos and anarchy. What do you do? I gave him the law of God.

I handed him the law of God. I had a book called The Institutes of Biblical Law translated in Spanish about six months earlier before I went down there. Happened to have one in my hand. And the best thing I could think of as I stood in the most dangerous city in Mexico talking to the guy who could put it back together. The only thing I could think of is, God's law will do you really good.

Teach them to observe whatsoever I've commanded. Guy says, what do I do? I got murder everywhere. I said, you put billboards all across this city. Thou shalt not kill God.

You tell them it's a message from God. You give them the ethical authority of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the creator of the universe, and you teach the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom in your schools. I said what's bringing the chaos to Mexico is the same thing that's bringing the chaos to the streets in America, that's bringing 50% of our kids to Women that are giving kids under 30 years of age a 50% single parent rate. We have a situation that's devastating. Listen, you think America is going to be fine for the next few years?

Maybe. I was talking to a guy who's in charge of the prison systems in the state of Florida. He says, you know, the only thing that's keeping some little piece of stability in the inner city in Florida today, you know what it is, he said, it's grandmothers. It's the last bastion of any kind of order in tens of millions of homes across this country. One thing left, there's only one thing left, and that's grandmothers.

There are no fathers, there's no grandfathers, we're two to three generations away from that. When those grandmothers pass away, blood on the streets, blood on the streets. Why? Why? Because Americans are not discipling fathers, and Americans are not teaching the beginning of wisdom in American public schools is the fear of God.

And you see how that's gonna turn out in the next 20, 30, 40 years. If these men don't fear God, they will bring chaos in the streets. Now, of course, this is controversial stuff. We told everybody this. We told leaders in the public schools in the area, we told the mayor, we told all the mayor's staff, we told them, you have got to bring a fear of God in the teaching of the 10 Commandments into schools in Mexico if you are going to have any semblance of law and order in this land.

South Africa, people talk about, I've had a number of interviews about South Africa. It's chaos. South Africa is one of the most, if not the most dangerous country in the world today. What in the world do we do with South Africa? You give them the book of Proverbs.

You teach them the book of Proverbs. You know, when push comes to shove, why do you teach these people? Now, again, you know what the message today is. Just give them Jesus. Don't teach the law of God.

Don't bring them to repentance. Don't teach them to observe whatsoever Jesus has commanded. Just give them Jesus. Listen, Jesus isn't going to do the job. If Jesus isn't a prophet, a priest and a king to whom we need to submit ourselves and to submit every ordinance of man.

Friends, I'm here to tell you, you gotta get a gospel that's no longer a mile wide an inch deep. You gotta bring the gospel of Jesus Christ and disciple these nations and begin with precept upon precept, statutes upon statutes, you say, well, what do we do when somebody falls short of one of the Proverbs? And by the way, how in the world do you disciple Africa? How do you disciple a continent that's so saturated in irresponsible fathers and fornication and AIDS and a lack of work and laziness and slothfulness and revolutions and Marxism and give them the book of Proverbs. It's the same thing.

This is the very same thing I teach home school conferences across America. How in the world are we gonna deal with the future in this country? With all of the incredible breakdown that that happens as tyranny plays upon anarchy. Guys, teach your children the book of Proverbs. Teach them principle upon principle.

And I know that the first time you teach a son to be diligent, it's probably not going to do the trick. I know this from experience. How many times do you have to teach a son to honor his father before that really kicks in? Well, let's see, 24, 678 times thus far. It takes a lot of work, a lot of side-by-side discipleship.

And any homeschool parent knows what I'm talking about here. If you have been side-by-side with somebody, you started out with command number one, realized you couldn't knock it out in one day. You finally understand that this is a process of discipleship. But you say, what about America? Well, according to Scott Brown last night, a half of a percent of 18 to 25-year-old Americans still hold absolutes or a biblical worldview down from 14% in the previous generation.

That's a 2, 800% decline in a single generation. That's a 97% apostasy rate in just the last 20 years with just one generation. 97% of kids raised in homes where parents still had some semblance of a biblical worldview, 97% of the kids don't anymore. You say, yeah, I understand only half a percent Still hold to a biblical worldview, believe their absolutes. But here's the good news, 30% still attend church and believe in Jesus.

Yeah! Yeah! And they listen to CCM. Yeah! Yeah!

Trying to whip myself up and doing some enthusiasm over that one. Friends, I know that many of them tossed the pine cone into the fire. I understand that 37% of them gave their hearts to Jesus when they were eight years old or 10 or 12. I understand all that. But that's not the commission.

That wasn't the commission. What was the commission? Okay, I was raised in a Christian home. I have no idea when I was saved. I'm sorry.

My mother wrote it into my Bible. When he was four years old, he repeated a seven-word prayer after me, and that gave me assurance for a while because the epistemological authority of my mother's hand wrote it in my Bible. But I'm here to tell you, friends, that's, again, not biblical. The Bible isn't trying to get us to cook up some kind of emotional experience. And, you know, I know that preachers like me want to see a commitment.

And when we get emotional, we think about it, we bring a very good sermon into play. Now we won't do the altar call because we all know we're reformed now. We can't do that anymore. But if I could just, you know, create an emotional environment that's intense enough, if I bring the law of God with so much intensity, then maybe I'll get a conversion finally out of these people. Friends, I'm here to tell you that regeneration comes by the Holy Spirit.

It doesn't come from me getting emotional. I've been convicted of my sin hundreds of times. I've believed in Jesus thousands of times. I've repented on my sins tens of thousands of times. Now you tell me on which of those occasions was I truly truly truly truly truly regenerated?

And my answer is I have no idea. I don't know. And the Bible doesn't require a date. Because you see, the Bible teaches that we are to plant the seeds and water, water, water, water. Now, we're to do two things, baptize and teach them to observe whatsoever Jesus commanded.

Some people say, because baptize mentioned first there, then you got to baptize first. But other people say, well, in other places, it doesn't repent first and be baptized later. And so it's got to be another way around it, and then we get mad at each other and we throw stones at order and all that stuff. But the Bible teaches us, I'm not gonna go there. Bible teaches us to do two things.

Baptize and teach them stuff. Now some people say, okay, well, you'll baptize first. Some people say, you know, you'll teach them stuff first and then baptize and teach some more. And then some people say you teach, teach, and then baptize and then teach, teach, teach, teach. And then you baptize again because you weren't sure that the first baptism took.

And then you teach, teach, teach, and then you baptize some more. Again, I don't care. I don't care. Not in that discussion. Not going there.

Just two things God wants us to do, and that is baptize and teach and leave regeneration to God. See, there's so many farmers that they're constantly planting seeds, watering, and then they're digging it up to see if God's regenerating another. You know, does it dig it up? Is it regenerated yet? You know, it's okay, throw some more water.

Okay, let's dig it up. Try to find some way to x-ray the soil so you can kind of figure it out. It's not your job. How do you know when somebody's regenerated? Granted, over time you begin to see fruit.

And as I see it, fruit, the best manifestation of fruit is the idea of replication, is fruit is replication. And if your children are replicating in the lives of their own children, I guess you can just kind of hold off a little bit. Things are going pretty good. But our job is to do the watering. You say, well, what do we teach?

Faith and repentance. Faith and repentance. Faith and repentance. You see, this idea that we're just... No, no, the goal is to get them to a youth camp.

And we get them to the best, most emotional preacher possible. And it's a shazam, shazam, bamboo. You know how bamboo grows? Okay, this is the way that ministry works. Shazam, shazam, bamboo!

That's not the way I read the Bible. The way I read the Bible is teach these words diligently as you sit in your house, as you walk by the way, as you raise up, as you lie down. Bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord, which is what farmers do with plants, okay? We don't just push buttons here. We just do the work, and over time, God does His work.

Now, I warn you against presumption. On one hand, presumption. Oh, you know, He gave His little life to Jesus 22 years ago, He's gotta be good forever. Or He was baptized when He was a kid, where He was good to go. Presumptive regeneration.

The presumptive, it's all taken care of. The other side is faithlessness. Faithlessness is, oh, man, I can't believe my son, he gave his heart to Jesus 17 times and he's still kind of a jerk! And I don't think it's gonna work out! Oh, he's going to hell!

He's going to hell! Oh, oh, oh, oh! That's faithlessness. Okay, so don't be faithless, don't be presumptuous, you say, well, what do we do? The just shall live by faith.

Okay? Whatever you do, you do not try to do any of this discipleship stuff without faith. It's faith along the way, my friends. It's faith along the way. All right.

Well, you say, well, if only one half a percent of American 18 and 25 year olds are still holding absolutes. Whatever happened to youth groups in Christian schools? You understand the last 40 years, we have put billions of dollars into youth groups and youth ministers. I mean, 1950s and 60s, you know, there weren't people putting, you know, these youth ministers and youth pastors, huge youth rooms as far as I can see with all the computer games and everything. You know, I mean, this is just wild.

The billions of, it's gotta be hundreds of billions of dollars that have been put into this. Now, if you had never done anything in the past, and then you put a hundred billion dollars into a ministry, and you wound up with a 97% failure rate, by far exceeding anything that's ever been accomplished in terms of failure in the history of the world, Wouldn't you think it'd be time to back up and say, whoa, maybe we're doing something wrong. I mean, just, I don't, wouldn't just your average person say, oh, there's something wrong. We're doing something wrong. I would think so.

You're like rational people. You know, business, aren't these people supposed to be church growth businessmen? I'm not a businessman, my guess at some point you say, well I've been spending 100 billions of dollars, this seems to be the most counterproductive things anybody's ever done in the history of mankind. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me 387 times, I'm a complete idiot. Wow.

You say, well, What's the problem? And again, guys, I taught in a Christian school. I did, I taught in a Christian school. I have Christian school teachers and principals that I know, and many of them very, very burned out and very disappointed with results over, I'm talking 35, 40 years. I mean, very experienced men who've been working in some of this stuff.

What are we missing here, and how does the Great Commission tie into this? Let me say, number one, here's, I think, probably the most important impediment that's happening in the culture. And again, my heart goes out to youth leaders that are actually trying very, very hard. Please don't worry, we laughed a little bit about how we've been unsuccessful, and we probably ought to be crying, by the way. We ought to be tearing our clothes and crying out for God's mercy, because something's going on in this nation that's way beyond any of our methodology.

And it is God's sovereignty that's at work. And if we're not on our faces... I mean, methodologically, I think the best thing you could do is be on your faces, weeping, gnashing of teeth, ripping a few garments. We haven't done that in about 1, 000 years. But I would say ripping garments may be about where we need to be if you're a youth pastor or a pastor in the American church today.

Okay, so, but what are the things that are real problems that I can see from an earthly perspective? Number one, you can't have Two different forces discipling at the same time. And here's the problem with, again, youth groups, Christian schools, and my experience with youth in the homeschooling movement as well as anywhere else. Pulling them out of public schools really doesn't do the job. I'm learning that our failure rate right now in homeschoolers is pretty much close to the failure rate that's happening in Christian schools and other places.

But here's the problem. The problem is that there is another force discipling these kids, And that force is impossible for youth group leaders to deal with. Here's what happens. Youth group leader comes out day one, stands in front of everybody, notices that the entire group has bones shoved through their nose. What does he do?

He goes and gets a bone, and shows it through his nose! Of course that's what he does! So he can relate to the culture. See, again, who's leading the culture? Who's discipling the culture?

Nashville is through the iPods. The music that these kids listen to is discipling them. I mean, I asked one of the leaders if he had ever heard of Carrie Underwood. One of the leaders in our movement about an hour ago, I said, you ever heard of Carrie Underwood? I just showed her yesterday.

He said, never heard of her. I said, she's got 45 million downloads on YouTube, and you've never heard of her? Do you understand that 90% of at least the Western country-minded homeschoolers that I know listen to Carrie Underwood? Guys that come to my Shepherd Center for Discipleship, I've noticed, I've had to correct them. They're listening to Carrie Underwood.

I mean, guys raised in family-integrated churches are listening to Carrie Underwood. Do you understand the worldview of Carrie Underwood? People don't understand the worldview of Carrie Underwood. That's why I'm having to treat these things one by one. She's a very nihilistic, feminist, fornicating, pro-fornication, pro-drunkenness, pro-revenge, pro-burning down the house upon her drunken father.

It's just the most Horrible, vengeful, wicked music. I don't know, I think I've ever heard... I mean, if any of you know the history of country music, Loretta Lynn was kind of getting into that a little bit in the 1960s. It's like on steroids today. I mean, steroids!

And that's just country music. You want to talk about what's going on with Katy Perry and her pro-lesbian stuff she's trying to sell to 13-year-olds in youth groups. Okay, listen, as long as the iPods are turned on, Youth group leaders don't have a chance. They should just give up and go home. Because you can't have two forces discipling at the same time.

It's impossible. Here's the second problem. The second problem is that we drag this culture into the church. Now imagine if you took a cultural form that's out there, that's pretty obnoxious, lifting the middle finger. Has anybody ever seen that on the highway?

Somebody sticks a middle finger out the window. It's obnoxious, it's a cultural form, nothing wrong with the middle finger, but it stands for something, symbols mean something, and so does music. And so here's what happens. What happens to youth group leaders today is they bring the middle finger into the worship service that we're gonna sanctify this, and everybody just worships Jesus lifting the middle, I won't do it because it's so incredibly obnoxious that you don't want me to do this in front of everybody because you know what it means, the symbols mean stuff to every single person. We all know it, we're in the culture, we know it.

It's food offered to idols and we know the food that's offered to idols and what the symbols mean. Everybody does, don't kid yourself. When you bring that into worship, what happens? It defiles worship. God wants to lift you up with the hands, you bring that middle finger in, and you know what happens?

You're bringing something very obnoxious into the worship of God. Now, there are people who have brought a form of music that is very aggressive, very angry, very disrespectful to parents. It's rape rap, and it's a hip-hop form. And it's been designed by people with the worst possible father-son, father-daughter relationships you could ever imagine. They talk about rape, and they talk about some of the most horrible things regarding their own mothers, that you could ever imagine, they develop the form around it, and people wanna bring that into the church!

Now, I dealt with that on my show in the last couple of days. You can't believe the number of young people from this group that wrote into me for the first time and said, I've loved everything you've given me thus far. I just think you're dead wrong on this cultural stuff. That's scary. Anybody else think that's scary?

I even did a little thing called, you know, if somebody came into a church service and wanted to bring in a fear of God theme. And so the music director works on this number, shows up at the pastor's office Saturday night, says, pastor, sir, I got a great song on the fear of God. This is the way it goes. Listen, listen, I just wrote this this week. You gotta rev, rev, rev!

Gotta rev, rev, rev, rev, rev! Gotta rev! Gotta rev the old man in the sky! What do you think? Pass?

Pastor says, sounds to me like the mode doesn't fit the message. It contradicts it. Way too postmodern for me. Almost no pastor will say that because he doesn't understand culture. And I had people writing into my show where I did that yesterday, and they said, that was the best part.

I love that number. That's really scary. These people don't have a clue for what the fear of God is and how cultural forms need to present the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. Guys, I start getting into this. The hair on the back of my head starts to go up because I'm overwhelmed by the number of kids that are utterly postmodern in their thinking.

Well, what do we do? We have to turn it all off. The reason I speak to homeschooling conferences is because I know that I can't disciple people who continue to keep plugged in to the matrix. The electrodes are sticking out of their heads, they go to the same schools, they listen to the same music, they watch the same TV shows. If they are so plugged in, you can forget about your inner city works, you can forget about your youth groups, you can forget about teaching the Word of God, you can forget about your Billy Graham crusades as long as somebody else is discipling them through the electrodes that come through the iPods.

Guys, the preaching of the Word of God is useless. Useless. You cannot be discipled. You can't follow God and man at the same time. We have got to unplug the electrodes.

I have minimal progress with homeschooling audiences because there are some that unplug themselves in the matrix for a week or two or three months, and they come to a homeschooling conference, and they say, I'm willing to start listening to some of this stuff. But you cannot do this if they're being discipled by the culture around them. Well, our responsibility is to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness. It's Matthew 6.33. There are three elements to the kingdom.

There's the geographical element. And typically this is what people think of when they hear the Great Commission. Going into all the nations, Baptizing them, teaching them to observe whatsoever I've commanded. You disciple the nations. Now, people think that's foreign nations.

The geographical element is important, very important. It's not the only element, though. There's an institutional element. And I think a father needs to have these things in mind. I think every father here needs to have a kingdom mind.

You need to somehow convey to your children that there is something more important in your life than buying that next boat or your car or having a big house or whatever it is. You need to convey to your children that your passion is the kingdom of God. If you convey that, that's a very good first step for the nurture of your children in your home. So get that world map on your wall. Point out where gospel messages are going forth.

Point out, put tax where the Kingdom of God is going. And maybe you have a vision for the Kingdom of God making it to Saudi Arabia. If that be the case, or Turkey or anywhere else, then you say that's the focus. That's our family's focus. We care about that.

The Kingdom of God needs to go here, needs to go here, needs to go here. I can't believe it hasn't made it into this neighborhood yet. We need to get the Kingdom of God into this inner city neighborhood, and this is how we gotta do it. And inner cities need to be on the minds of a lot of people today, because they're in a big, big trouble, and we'll be in more trouble, as I said, in the years to come. We've got to find a way to get these guys out of the inner cities, unplug the iPods, and disciple them.

But remember, the Kingdom of God is also institutional. When the Kingdom of God made it to Tanna with John Payton, I love the story. He first got there, of course, he almost lost his life something like 20 times, and I encourage you to give your children the great autobiographies. We have a summary of the great autobiographies. I put them in one book, got a workbook for it, and I recommend this as basic curriculum to any junior high child or early high school years.

You've got to give them the great autobiographies of the greatest men to ever live. If you're giving your children stuff written by pagans and stuff in high school years, forget about that. Give them the good books, the autobiography of John Paton. Give them a good workbook on that and make sure they understand they sat on the front seat of these guys' lives as these guys extended the kingdom by incredible faith. He almost loses his life again and again.

I can't read these tales about Patrick and John Knox and John Payton and others and John Bunyan without tears coming out of my face because guys, this is intense stuff where God is nurturing faith and some of the greatest men who ever lived. So give them the great stories. But John Paton has a great story of this, of faith, because he has multiple attempts on his own life again and again and again. But by God's grace and by his stalwart faith, he established a wonderful outpost of God's kingdom in some of the most dangerous lands in the history of the world in the 1880s and 1890s. And those lands, by the way, are still populated by people who believe in Jesus.

It's amazing, after all these years. But what we find with John Payton is that at the beginning, everybody had to bring their chickens and their pigs to church and they would wander around and they would make a big, a lot of noise and his wife said it was impossible to hear sometimes John Payton preaching because all of these animals were running around. The reason they had to bring the animals is because they left them at home, someone would have stolen them. But guess what happened over about 10 or 15, 20 years as they began to bring biblical law to bear, as they begin to train people in the book of Proverbs, They began to work with them on the commandments, including the eighth commandment, thou shalt not steal. And they began to change the civil systems, the agriculture, the way they did things, the way that the economies, and as they built their economy, do you think there'd be a little less stealing, a little less cannibalism, a little less trying to rip off other tribes and all the rest, yeah, that's exactly what happened.

Because as the gospel came in, it transformed them, which is a goal, I think, of the Great Commission, it's the goal of the Great Commission. If you're not transforming life, You haven't done it. You may have a little superficial faith, a little external proposition, yeah, yeah, I kind of believe in Jesus, now give me a handout. You might have a little bit of that, but what we're after is transformation of the cultures. That's what we're going for.

That's the Great Commission, and it happens. Now, what happens if you bring the gospel to a land, let's say an island chain, 40, 000 people converted and discipled, 40, 000 people somewhat discipled, maybe you change their marriages, maybe you change something about their economics, But in the process, you forgot to mention Deuteronomy 6-7, Ephesians 6-4, the book of Proverbs. I mean, flat forehead moment. You forgot to tell them what fathers are supposed to do, what the Christian life is supposed to be like. Welcome to missions over the last 100 years.

We've been following the Japanese missions for about 100 years, or actually 40 years or so. But as we look at what's happened, guys, for the most part, the churches are filled with two things. Number one, older people. Number two, women and children. And you almost never get the children these days.

At least in a lot of the old line churches, you're not seeing the children. Why? They're walking away from the faith. What would happen if you forgot to give the generational component as you dealt with geographical, you started to read a few institutional things, but you forgot the Deuteronomy 6, 7, Ephesians 6, 4, Book of Proverbs, 1 Thessalonians 2, 11, 1 Timothy 3, 5, and 6 for elders. You forgot every single text in the Bible about the handling of Christian children or children in Christian homes.

What would happen to those mission works? They would dissipate and you would have to put another $30 million into rebuilding the kingdom of God on those islands in the years to come. Friends, this is the kind of thing that's happened. We're just not really discipling men to be fathers. That's why you get this mile-wide, inch-deep kind of gospel that's gone everywhere.

And it's a quality versus quantity issue. People want quantity. And they're always coming back and saying, I have 300 conversions. I got 30, 477 conversions in Sudan last week. You hear this kind of thing a lot in America.

I don't even listen to it. I don't pay any attention to it. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever to me. None. I say, well, So you drank some water and ate some rice as well, and you got these conversions or something.

Okay, whatever. Doesn't make any difference to me. No difference. You say, why? Because there is no greater joy than to see my children walking in the truth.

I don't care about conversions. I wanna see children walking in the truth. That's biblical. We wanna see people walking in the truth and that typically doesn't happen in one sermon or one guy on a short-term missions trip. It happens when you got a guy walking beside somebody else for a long time.

Which would you rather do in your life? Talk to three people for 10, 000 hours or 10, 000 people for three hours. You only had one shot at it. That's all you were able to do. Three people 10, 000 hours?

Or 10, 000 people for three hours about Jesus? Which would you rather do? What did Jesus do? He took 12 men for three years, and he was with them. That's what he did.

And that's how he changed the world. Now, you've heard this before, I'm sure, but here's the deal. We're so interested in quantities. We're not interested in qualities. I can't tell you how many missionaries I've talked to.

And I asked them, how are you going to reach these people? They go, well, we got a Vacation Bible School going. We have some children's programs. We have some women's programs. I say, you're reaching the men?

Well, not really, they're hard. Men are hard. Yeah? That's what the apostles did. They went to the heads of households and heads of tribes, and that's how entire households, entire tribes were one to Jesus Christ and discipled for a thousand years.

And we rarely see this in the present day. We gotta get discipleship going, my friends. Seven years ago, I'll tell you what, I started discipling young men. I've been working with the church for a long, I've had thousands of people come and go in my church. I got 80 core in my church and 310.

I have thousands come and go, thousands. Fluff in, fluff out, fluff in, fluff out. It's a typical church in America. Every single pastor says the same thing. I finally got sick of it seven years ago and said I'm gonna disciple the way the apostles and Jesus discipled.

Paul went into Ephesus, they say day and night HE WAS TEACHING. ONCE A WEEK IS NOT ENOUGH, GOTTA BE SEVEN DAYS. AND BY THE WAY, THIS HEAVY SABOTARIANISM DEVELOPS A DUELISM ABOUT LIFE. WE'RE REAL GOOD ON SUNDAY, SIX OTHER DAYS, NO REAL WORSHIP GOING ON, FRIENDS. WHEREVER THE GOSPEL HAS MADE PROGRESS, 7 DAYS, 24 HOURS A DAY, WHEREVER THERE HAS BEEN HEAVY DUTY, INTENSIVE, INTENTIONAL DISCIPLESHIP, GOD HAS CHANGED THOSE NATIONS.

AND I'M LOOKING BACK 7 YEARS LATER AND I'M TELLING YOU that having guys in my basement, I bring them in three days. Three days, I'm not doing the full seven days. I got Sunday, I got Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I have guys with me, and I've fed them literally thousands of meals. I have a thousand teaching opportunities in any given year with these guys. It would take me, if I visited with some of the men in my church once a month, it would take me 96 years to do what I did in one year with these young men.

One year, one year, one year! And I get them for three years as best as I can. Three years is the goal. I establish a relationship. I begin to understand where their needs are.

I begin to love them. I get to the point where I know this is very strange. I get to the point where I love these guys. I'm willing to give my life for them. And I will do whatever it takes to disciple them in the areas where I know they're weak, because I can tell they're weak because I've been with them for three years.

I know their sins inside and out. We gotta develop a much more intensive, relational, intentional discipleship opportunity. Enough of this running into a town and preaching every now and then, assuming somehow that's gonna do any good. No, it's gotta be every day. Acts chapter 2, same thing, they met daily.

Acts chapter 20, met daily, day and night. It's a daily, daily discipleship. It works in families, it works in family discipleship, and family worship, we all know it, at least those of us who have tried it for the last 18 years, now we disciple the nations the same way. This, I believe, is the goal, and any missionary that I'm gonna support, any missionary I'm gonna support, I'm gonna ask them, will you bring young men into your basement and work on them for the next three, five, seven years? If that's all that happens, if you wind up...

I mean, that's all that you get. After $600, 000, all you get are three men after five years. Praise God, you will transform that nation. You will transform that nation. I know you will.

We have got a disciple as Jesus did. And if we don't, guys, if we don't do that here in America, we're going to lose 90 to 95%, I believe, of our young boys who've been raised in nice little Christian homeschool homes. Unless there's intensive discipleship going on, I know the answer that people come back with is, yeah, but what you're talking about is too hard. Men are hard to get. Civil magistrates.

I mean, transforming the government of Mexico? Mier? That's too hard! Repentance is too hard! It's much easier to stand up in a university classroom and say, you know, I just want to share.

Jesus loves you all and has a wonderful plan for everybody's life. Thank you very much. It's harder to stand up and say, homosexuality is abomination against God. And feminism and fornication, another abominations, and we need to repent of these sins? These are sins that would take a soul to hell with them.

And we need to repent of this. You start saying stuff like that, those are fighting words, people are gonna hate your guts because you started talking repentance. You started talking about the real stuff. You started talking about these people being hell-deserving, sin-drenched sinners that need the grace of Jesus Christ and that blood, atonement that was for them. You start talking blood atonement.

You start talking repentance and the law of God. You're talking fighting words. People don't really want that. So what's the real problem? C.T.

Studd said this, Christ's call is to capture men from the devil's clutches and snatch them from the very jaws of hell to enlist and train them for Jesus and make them a mighty army of God. This can only be accomplished by a red-hot, unconventional, unfettered Holy Spirit religion by reckless sacrifice and heroism in the foremost trenches and I add faith in the resurrection of the Son of God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He didn't include faith. I agreed with his passion all the way to the end, but I'm gonna add, You cannot do any of this without faith. I think the problem with us is our faith is very, very weak.

Faith in what? Faith in the death of Jesus Christ. That Jesus conquered Satan. Jesus is risen. Jesus rules, and every single enemy will come under his footstool.

You will follow, lead, or get out of the way. Jesus Christ is going to conquer the nations. Now, question, you can get involved or you can sit on the sidelines. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. If you believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead and He's on the right hand of the Father, there is nothing, there is nothing you cannot do without that faith.

Friends, my encouragement today is to believe in Jesus Christ, believe in his Lordship, believe in what he has already done. He has already taken down so many strongholds. You think of the stronghold of homosexuality that was active for 800 years in the Greek states, and pedophilia and all the rest. Do you understand that Penn State is in big trouble right now because they tried to bring that back? Jesus conquered that over 1, 500 years of history.

Jesus overwhelmed these empires, these old Greek and Roman pagan states, and I know they're trying to bring them back. Trying to bring them back to Penn State, they're trying to bring them back, and this scourge of homosexuality across America, et cetera, et cetera. But let me tell you something. Jesus Christ is still on the throne. And these people are gonna pay for the things that they've done.

And those that have tried to change the calendar from AD to Common Era are going to pay a dreadful price for that. Because I'm here to tell you, the whole CE Common Era thing's going away in the next 20, 30 years. And Jesus Christ is going to be seen again as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords by a lot. The question is this, do you see Him that way today yourself? Do you have the faith to know to know to know that Jesus Christ lives?

He's risen from the dead and with that faith and his resurrection, you can stand against any kind of enemy. You can take the gospel anywhere in the world and you will make progress. The progress, of course, he's sovereignly ordained, but you will make progress because Jesus is in total control of everything that happens. This, I believe, is the message. I think it's the message of faith.

I think the reason why the church in America, the pastors, the youth groups, the games that they play in the youth groups, the reason why Christian schools are losing, the reason why America is so weak is because our leaders are weak, because I am weak, because you are weak. Brothers, we don't have enough faith. As I've stepped out to do the things that I've done in the last year or two. My faith was so weak, and I woke up every morning, said, God, increase my faith. Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief!

I've said that so many times. When I step out in front of the pulpit and preach some of the most difficult things I've ever preached, It is so hard. A brother in my shepherds center asked me just two days ago, how do you do it? I said, every time I step out, I'm so fearful, I don't even know if I can do it again. I just get on my knees and I pray, God, increase my faith one more time.

Give me faith to get out there one more time and say the most difficult things, disciple the nations. I know that I know that I can't do it without faith. The just will live by faith. It's not faith that happened in a conversion experience 25 years ago.