 Steven Ferdic, unqualified. It's in me! It's in me! It is God! I'm talking about the talent of elevation worship. I mean, let's just be honest. They are appealing to a wide range of Christians. Be they old, young, white, black, Hispanic, middle class, lower class, upper class, doesn't matter. They have some talent and let's just be honest. I don't care who you are. Some of the songs are actually pretty good, pretty powerful. They are talented and people are drawn to them. There's a reason why so many people are listening to them. People are drawn to them. I listen to them. But... The same power that made demons flee was in Nazareth, but Jesus could not release it because it was trapped in their unbelief. And there's one thing that even Jesus can't do. One thing that even the Son of God can't do. Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief. For those of you who don't know that elevation worship is a part of Elevation Church, where Steven Ferdic is the pastor. Now, the combination of elevation worship, the way that they conduct services, especially on Sunday at Elevation Church, the atmosphere, even the charisma of the pastor, it's inviting to a lot of people. And now let me just say this. In truth, I really don't have a lot of problems with elevation worship. Some of the things they do on Sunday, a lot of those things they do, it's not a problem with me at all. Now, I do have some issues, some things that I disagree with them on, but not a lot to just put them off to the side. Do they have some songs that, well, you know what, maybe the lyrics probably ought to change a little bit? Are they the most doctrinally sound when it comes to lyrics? Well, no, but let's just be honest. You won't find that. You can't say that 100% for any choir, for any praise and worship team across America. Not one. There's going to be some issues with some of the songs, because oftentimes the leadership doesn't always vet the songs. So I'm okay with people even listening to elevation worship just in their own private time, or if churches happen to sing an elevation worship song. But the pastor, Stephen Furtick, it's a whole other story. There wasn't enough leverage in our action to keep the law. So what God did when he sent his son, and this is why we get excited in church, and this is why tears fell our eyes when we think about Jesus, and this is why the gospel is still good news in the world today, because God broke the law for law. I said to every sinner, God broke the law for law. Now, before I get to Stephen Furtick and his issues and even the solution, I want you just to see how people are just even excited just to go visit the church, how people come from different parts of the country, make these drives just this excitement, this anticipation, just to go see a elevation church service. That's awesome. Yes. California. Welcome. Thank you. Oh my gosh. It was amazing, man. Elevation elevates you. Oh, I like that. Elevation elevates you. Worship was amazing. Even the message, even if we watched it up on the big screen, was so amazing. That man is definitely anointed to be a preacher. Wow. Now, before we start tearing these people down about how these people are kind of lacking their babes, they don't really understand the Bible, they don't understand sound doctrine, and all that might be true. But the truth of it is that they matter also. Their souls matter, their bodies matter. Everything about them matters to God. And if it matters to God, if they matter to the God, then guess what? They ought to matter to us as well. Let me show you something that Jesus said in John 6 and see if you can kind of get where I'm going with this. In John 6, 26, Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the lows. Now, I won't go too far into his whole point here, but people followed after Jesus, came after Jesus because of what he could do for them. They noticed the signs and so forth, but they wanted something for themselves. And so what did he do? He fed them. He healed them. He raised the dead. He did those things for them. They came in many cases, some for need, but also because of a want. And what did Jesus do? He tended to those. And so because someone has a particular want or a need, and that's the reason why they come, well, what do we do? We don't cast them out and say, well, no, you need to come for sound doctor. You need to come to hear the word of the Lord. Well, that's really not many of us at all. As we mature, that does change. But in the beginning, we need to be sensitive to the needs of the people who don't know Christ or who are young in the faith. And so sometimes there is an obligation to meet the needs of people and even sometimes there are wants. And even when people come with the wrong motives, what should our response be? It's obviously it can't be to down them and to say, you need to be here for the right reasons, the right motives. Because let's be honest, in many cases we didn't come to Christ for that reason. A lot of us because of a brokenness, a circumstance that was beyond our control because we were just down, we were looking for something. That might have been the impetus that caused us to come to him. Obviously we know it's the Holy Spirit working in us and regenerating our heart. But let's just be clear. We didn't come to Christ because we were angels because we were saved because we were holy already. That wasn't the reason why we came. Same for these people. So what should our response be? I'll come to that, I'll address that in just a second. But let's turn our attention to Stephen. Now this is called the drenchinator. I'm praying about whether to follow through on this illustration. And I hear the Lord say, yes! Now you hear some of these things that he says and you just think, wow. He seems to be a bit self-serving. He seems to be promoting himself. He wants to be as kind of the frat boy, almost a little youngish acting, a little soft morgue sometimes. And so when people see a pastor, they ought to see someone that they respect, one for how they handle their word, but also how he carries himself, that he's someone they can look up to almost like a father figure, a grandfather figure, somebody mature, someone who can rightly divide the word of truth. Well, I don't think anyone would ever accuse Stephen of being any of those things. John McCarthy talked about him. Obviously, you heard the clip about him saying that Stephen Ferdic is unqualified. Unqualified. And then he gives his rationale later on during a session that I think is the master's seminary. Let me just give you a little principle to kind of work with. Superficial understanding of Scripture produces superficial worship. Shallowness produces superficial worship. And that's what we have. I've been reading a book called The Juvenalization of the Church. An interesting book, The Juvenalization of the Church, or The Juvenalization of Christianity, actually, it's a title. Juvenalization of Christianity. You're living in a time when junior church has taken over. I grew up in an era when we had what was called junior church. When we were in the fourth grade and fifth grade, we went to junior church. Well, we now have junior church in the auditorium. That's right. It's designed for elementary kids or junior hires. You know, the preacher gets his clothes from Abercrombie and Fitch, tries to look as much like a teeny-bopper rock star as he can. Now, when you look at Stephen Ferdic, yep, I think John McCarthy nailed it. But what's Stephen Ferdic's response? It's weird. I didn't get mad. I normally would get... Yeah, but I didn't. I didn't. I come from a town of 6,000 people. Of course, I'm unqualified to Pastor Thousand. But I'm called. I'm called. I'm called. I'm called. See, it's not that I'm qualified. It's not that I'm perfect. It's not that I'm together. It's not that I'm there. I have arrived. It's not that I never yell at my kids. It's not that I never have road rage. I'm working on it. Pray for me. But in the meantime, I'm called. And he who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it. And that's why I'm confident because I'm called. And you know what I did? I wrote a book and I called it Unqualified. Right there on the cover. Read all about it. Paul says, Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends. So you building yourself up, you making yourself out to be something special. That's not how you do it. You don't talk about your achievements. You don't speak about it. And when someone corrects you, you ought to listen to them. Jesus says, For they love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. So guys, what do I think the solution is? Well, what do you gather? I think the solution is from the thumbnail. I think that a person like a John MacArthur preaching, teaching, pastoring, a church like Elevation Church, think about that for a second. You've got all these people coming in from miles and miles around. And then they do the same thing for his church as well. You've got people that will drive to his church from all over the country. And if they're in California, they'll make a special trip to go to his church specifically because they want to hear him. They love his teaching. And I think they should. I think John MacArthur is a great teacher. I think that he is sound. And so, but could you imagine, think about this for a second, could you imagine a church like Elevation Church with the worship they have, with the drawing in of young people who have no clue as to what sound doctrine is, who haven't even been told about it. They don't even know there's a such thing as sound doctrine. What if when they came, they were emotionally charged? They did hear relevant words being sung, nice tune and so forth. And now their hearts are really open. They're eager to hear something. And what they heard, what they hear is the actual truth of God. They actually heard the gospel. They heard someone breaking down the word. They heard someone exegeting a passage giving an expository preaching. Do you think they've ever heard an expository sermon at Elevation Church? Hmm, I doubt it. Now I'm not advocating that John MacArthur leaves his church or am I advocating that his choir or praise and worship team, that it changes to become more like them. What's lacking today in a church, in the churches of America is a mismatch. Here's what I mean. We've got a praise and worship team, a choir that resembles the pastor. Here's the problem. The pastor, when he comes out and when he preaches, there should be some awe and reverence out of the things that are coming out of his mouth. Obviously when we do praise and worship and this is something I'm familiar with, that people ought to be ushered into worshiping. They shouldn't watch you. You should bring them in to worship God. That's the point of a praise and worshiping. You should lead them into worshiping Lord. And if you perform, if you want to put on a performance, a show, let it be for audience of one, for him. And so when that happens, the next thing that has to happen is the word, that there has to be a leader or lead team to also make sense of the songs that you just heard. Because let's be honest, people like to listen to music. I don't care what genre it is, either Christian or non-Christian, people like music. And so people who are looking for a word, who are looking for something spiritually to get it given to them by someone who is spiritually mature like a John MacArthur, wouldn't that be great? And that's what I mean by a mismatch. People who are the pastor doesn't look like the praise and worship team. It's okay that the praise and worship team is younger and may act younger. I think a praise and worship team, I think a choir ought to have a good mix of the young, the old, not just age-wise of the people, but also the songs, newer songs, older songs. I've presided over services where we've had the hymns and then we also infused the more contemporary things and we've had older people singing younger songs and younger people singing the older songs and it went well because everybody in the audience desires and needs to worship Christ and we're not supposed to pick a particular style or preference and make that be the standard or I think we ought to listen to just hymnals. That's all ought to be. Well, you're going to lose a lot of people that way or I think it ought to be all contemporary. Well, you're going to lose a lot of people that way also. But there can be a mix and I've seen people who didn't have this preference end up enjoying that preference as well because everyone is brought into it. And then on top of that, you add good sound teaching, good sound preaching. The preaching is not looking for a show, not looking to make a spectacle of himself, looking to make God, make Christ the feature, make him the person who we're speaking about, put him under the spotlight. That's how it ought to be and unfortunately there are some churches that do that. Let me make that clear. There are some, but we need more. We need less of the pastors, we need less of the churches that have the inviting sound of the music ministry, but it turns heaven off once the preacher opens his mouth. We don't need that. Wouldn't it be great if there were more of the elevation type church worship groups and more of the John MacArthur type preaching married together and then people who came in for maybe the wrong motives leave with the right feeling? How awesome would that be? And so while pastors are actually looking for a good praise and worship, a good worship experience, because you should have that, we also ought to make sure that the main thing isn't put on the back burner and that's not a secondary thing and that the preaching actually leads people to the truth of God, to the knowledge of Christ so that we can grow in the greater world and the knowledge of Christ so that we can grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord. Because rather than having a Stephen Furtick who seems to be looking for the approval of men, let it be done the way Paul says it. Am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. And so a true servant of Christ is going to after the music is done, after the guitars are put down, after the mics are put up, the drummer sticks have been laid down in the word, the true, the true meaning, the true purpose of us coming together to hear the word, to fellowship together, then that can take place with somebody who knows how to rightly divide the word. Amen.