April 2, 2025 • 46 mins
How do you proclaim Jesus in a pagan society? We're going to the Book of Acts to look at what the Apostle Paul saw in Athens and what he said to the extremely religious people he met. Dr. Jeremy Treat is our guest. He lives in East Hollywood and is pastor for preaching and vision at Reality LA. If you're concerned about unbelievers you know, don't miss the encouragement on Chris Fabry Live.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Chris Fabry Live! There
is a theological lectureship going on at Moody Bible Institute
today and tomorrow. And when I saw there's a pastor
from Hollywood who's going to speak, I said, I want
to have a conversation with this fellow. So you're going
to meet Doctor Jeremy Treat today who is pastor for
Preaching and Vision at Reality LA, Reality Church, LA. And
(00:30):
his message today was about where you're living every day,
where we're both living. And that is how do you
proclaim Jesus in a pagan society? How do you live
the truth of the gospel and speak the truth that
Jesus changes everything? If that is a question on your
soul in your context and you want to communicate that
(00:51):
to the people you care about, join us today at
the Radio Backyard Fence. You can find out more online.
Chris Fabriclive. Org. Big thank you to our team. Ryan
Carnegie doing all things technical. Trish is our producer. Amy's
in the chair today. Anthony will be answering your calls.
And one more group. Thank you, friends and partners, for
your support. We can't do what we do without your help.
(01:12):
This month of April, it's only the second, but we're
starting the ground running. Our. Thank you. This month is
a little book that might be a game changer for you.
Let me ask you this. Do you have a son
or a daughter? Maybe a grandson or granddaughter who's on
your heart today for some reason? What if, instead of
simply worrying and being anxious about them and about the
(01:33):
choices they're making and about, you know, all the things
that make you anxious, what if you're concerned for them,
could be turned into a greater dependence on the power
of God? So you begin to pray scriptural prayers for
them rather than bless them and and help them, you know,
turn them to your heart, draw them to you. All
(01:54):
good prayers. But what if you prayed specific scriptural Prayers
and in the process you are changed as you lean
on his provision, his goodness, his grace. For that son, daughter, grandson,
granddaughter or relative, give a gift of any size at
archive.org or you can call the number 866953 Doctor Erwin
(02:17):
Lutzer book, A Practical Guide for Praying Parents. We've given
this before, but I'm coming back to it today because
my guess is this might be right where you're living.
A Practical guide for praying parents go to Chris Fabry live.
And for those who are new and you don't know
how to spell it conventional, Chris and Fab is fabulous.
(02:40):
Fabry Chris Fabry live 866953. It's understandable that you're anxious.
Take that anxiety and let it make you become a
praying parent. All right. So many moons ago, I was
a student at Moody Bible Institute. They could only handle
me for a year, but I learned a lot and
(03:01):
I loved the classes. I loved the professors who spoke
into my life, who answered a lot of the questions
that I had back then. But there were people who
came and spoke in chapel one, two, you know, a
week here, a few days there. I still remember some
of those messages from home. It's been a long time,
40 years. Doctor Jeremy Treat spoke about proclaiming Christ in
(03:23):
a pagan society today from acts chapter 17. If you're
playing the home game, you can get your New Testament out.
And I've asked him to join us. He has a
PhD in theology. I asked him before the program, so where?
What schools? Biola, Seattle, Pacific, Fuller, Trinity and Wheaton. You
passed by Moody. You got really close. And he is
(03:46):
pastor for Preaching and vision at Reality Church. LA doctor treat.
How are you doing today?
S2 (03:51):
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on, Chris.
S1 (03:53):
I'm so glad I got to see your message. Our
listeners probably didn't, but I got to see that. I
want to ask you about it, but let me start
with you for a primer on who Jeremy Treat is.
You grew up in Alaska, is that right?
S2 (04:04):
Yeah. That's right.
S1 (04:05):
Where what did you want to do when you were
a kid?
S2 (04:07):
Oh, man. Well, I mean, I grew up in a
small town in Alaska. My dad was a cabinetmaker, so
I grew up in the shop building stuff and wanted
to be like my dad. Um, I started playing basketball
in fourth grade. Most kids in Alaska play hockey, but, uh,
hockey is an expensive sport. And there was four of us,
and my parents told me to find something else. And
(04:28):
so I picked basketball. And I loved basketball. So that
became my dream. From that point on, I wanted to
be an NBA player. That was my goal.
S1 (04:35):
And now you're in LA, so you can probably go
try out, right?
S2 (04:39):
That's right. Yeah, yeah I'm in LA. But there's there's
a few good basketball players there already.
S1 (04:44):
So that's what I hear. Yeah. That's what they tell me. Um,
so growing up in and having a cabinetmaker, a carpenter
for a father, that probably is not lost on.
S2 (04:54):
You, right? Right, right.
S1 (04:56):
What? What did you learn from your dad that you
couldn't learn from anybody else?
S2 (05:00):
Oh, man. I mean, my dad's my hero in so
many ways. He my my dad is my hero because
he gave me everything that he never had. Um, my
dad had a really rough childhood growing up in Kansas, and, uh,
he was able to, by God's grace, uh, prevail through
that and grow and cling to God's grace and then
(05:22):
be the father to me and my siblings that he
never had. And I grew up knowing that I was
loved and being pointed to the Lord. And he never
had any of that. And the trajectory of all kinds
of really horrific stuff really stopped with him. And so, yeah, my,
my dad means so much to me to this day.
(05:43):
I have a great relationship with him and, and praise
God for all the work that he's done in his
life and how I'm able to experience the fruit in
so many blessings that come with his sacrifice and his
willingness to cling to God's grace amidst difficult times.
S1 (05:58):
We had Pat Morley on yesterday, and we talked about
going from broken boy to mended man, and he said
the same thing about his own dad and the trajectory
in his own father's life. So how how did your
dad break that cycle then, in his own life?
S2 (06:17):
Well, I won't get into the particular cycles, but there
was a lot of different abuse and, um, hardship in
his life. And I think God did a work in
his life of teaching him to cling to him. And,
you know, I always my, my dad is I thought
of my dad growing up as he's such a strong man.
I mean, he's, you know, carpenter swinging a hammer and
(06:39):
could do anything. But I also I also saw that
he was strong because he was like like it talks
about in Second Corinthians 12, he was able to embrace
his own weakness as a way of experiencing God's strength.
And I think as I grew up, I started recognizing
that that my dad's not just strong. God is strong,
(07:02):
and he's showing his strength through him. And it's actually
the way that the sufficiency of God's grace worked in
my dad's life that made him who he was and
made him the dad that he is to me and
my siblings. So, yeah, I mean, God, God has just
made him who he is through hardship in so many ways.
(07:23):
And so God's grace shines through and through.
S1 (07:26):
And that tension, I think that's one of the things
in the message that you gave today to the students
at Moody. That tension inside is, I really want to
do great things for God. I really want to, you know,
I want to impress him. I want my identity to
be and fill in the blank whatever it is that
I do for God. And it says in your bio
(07:47):
that as a teenager you grasped Christianity wasn't about what
you could do for God, but about what he did
for you in Christ. And it sounds like that's what
your dad grabbed a hold of. And then you caught
the same vision. Is that true?
S2 (08:02):
Yeah. I mean, I, you know, for me, I grew
up with my parents pointing me to the Lord and
and teaching me the Bible, and they were great. But
the churches that I grew up in, I would say
in general, had a culture of emphasizing external obedience. And
it's it's all about you better keep the rules or
God's going to be upset with you. And I the
(08:25):
thing about me is I'm a I'm I'm competitive. I,
I will rise to the occasion. I'll get things done.
I'm accomplishment driven. And so I kind of learned how
to play the game. And I got good at keeping
certain rules. But I also learned that I just needed
to act that way at church. Um, and so I think,
you know, as a teenager, I was really self-righteous. I mean,
(08:48):
I had this kind of pride and this genuine attitude
that I thought God was lucky to have me on
his team. And I remember reading the New Testament and
seeing Jesus confront the Pharisees and realize, like seeing myself
in them and realizing, oh, like I'm I'm a part
of the group that Jesus confronts. And it wasn't until
(09:12):
God really exposed my sin and my need for grace
that I understood the beauty of the gospel. And I recognize.
S1 (09:20):
Painful, isn't it?
S2 (09:21):
Yeah.
S1 (09:21):
Is it painful to see yourself there? Because everybody wants
to be, you know. Well, I'm Peter and I, you know.
But but when you see yourself as the Pharisees, that's hard.
S2 (09:30):
But the amazing thing about it was, is that it
wasn't even sequential. It was like simultaneous as as God
was exposing the ugliness of my pride and my heart.
He was, at the same time, like pouring out his
mercy upon me. And so there was just this sense
of like, oh, I'm such a sinner and Christ is
such a great savior. And that changed everything for me
(09:54):
of of recognizing. Yeah, it's about what God's done for me.
And then that produces a life of where I'm living
for him and following his rules and obeying him. But
it's it's not doing that to earn God's approval. It's
doing it from a place of already receiving his approval
by grace. And so that's why, for me, I mean,
(10:15):
what happened to me as a teenager is it's the
same type of prayer that I prayed this morning of saying, God,
I know that you've accepted me. You love me. You're
for me. Help me to live in light of that
today for your glory. Now. So that's why, for me,
I just. I need to keep coming back to the
gospel every day and applying it to my life.
S1 (10:35):
Without leaning on the outcome, you know, without leaning on God.
If you do this for me, then I'm a success.
Or even the response of the to the students, and
I know I heard them responding to you. Well, but
you you preached about Paul in the Areopagus. And if
you get to the end of that and you look
(10:55):
at you look at how they responded to him, he
spoke the truth. He he was in that context. You know,
he gave them the truth and a kind of affirmed
them in how religious they were and then said, you're
a little off track here. But their response, we don't
control that response. And that's hard for somebody who, it
sounds like in your life is a lot like mine.
(11:17):
It's like there's a certain amount of control that you've had.
And if I can do this, if I can fix
the outcome over here, then I want to do that.
And when it doesn't turn out well, it's like, uh,
Mary and Martha and Lazarus, you know? Jesus, if you'd
shown up, then. Okay, so there's a lot to talk
about here with Doctor Treat. And I want you to
get into the conversation as well. Maybe something that we
(11:38):
say in this hour is going to push a button
in your heart, and we'll talk with us. (877) 548-3675. Not
Your Treat is written about the atonement. He's written about
seeking first the kingdom of God and the crucified King
as well. You'll find out more at Chris Farrell. Doctor
(12:11):
Jeremy Treat is joining us today in the studio on
Chris Fabry Live. He is pastor for Preaching and Vision
at Reality LA. Go to the website. It's really interesting
to see because the church is right in the heart.
I think you said in the message that it's right
next to Netflix on Sunset Boulevard. Is that right?
S2 (12:31):
Yeah, that's where we meet on Sundays. Yeah.
S1 (12:33):
Okay. Uh, and and you also meet in. Is it
a multi-site church?
S2 (12:38):
Well, we so we've met in a high school for
the last 16 years, but five years ago we were
given a small church building and an office building. And
so the the church building, office building that we own now,
that's kind of our hub throughout the week. And then
we do an evening, a small evening service there. But
our morning service, which is our bigger service, is in
(13:00):
the high school that's on Sunset Boulevard or our church
building that we call the Hope center is down the
street in East Hollywood.
S1 (13:07):
Got it. So it's a complicated story, but it's a
good one, right?
S2 (13:11):
It's a great story. Story of redemption.
S1 (13:13):
Okay. And I always like to know, because our listeners,
you know, again, didn't get to hear your message, but
they want to know a little bit more about you
and how you got to be where you are. And
I have to ask you about Tiffany. You've been married
to Tiffany 19 years. You have four girls, ten, 12, 13, 15. Um,
so tell me, how did you know Tiffany was the one?
S2 (13:35):
Oh, man. Uh, well, it's a fun story of how
we met. I went on a on a basketball trip
with athletes in action. So I was I joined a
team of other college basketball players, and we were going
to go to Africa for a month and play national
teams and share the gospel and all that. And so
I get placed on this team and we do our
training camp in small town Indiana and, um, we stay
(13:57):
in host families there. Long story short, I ended up
marrying the coach's daughter. And so my wife, Tiffany, her
dad was my coach, her mom was the team nurse
and her brother was the point guard. So I spent
three weeks with her family in Africa. And then we
just we kept in touch. After that, we went from
emailing to calling to visiting and then five years later
(14:19):
ended up getting married. So yeah, we're coming up on
20 years this August. And I love my wife so much.
She's my best friend and the most godly person that
I know, and we have a lot of fun together.
And yeah, we have we have four girls, so there's
never a dull moment in our house. I love it,
I love being a girl dad. They are the sweetest
and they've got my heart. Yeah. And it's a fun
(14:42):
season right now. I mean, they are they're becoming little women.
And I'm so proud as a dad seeing who they're
who they're becoming.
S1 (14:50):
Well, if you were an athlete with athletes in action,
you must be pretty good. I mean, you it's one
thing to shoot a basketball. It's another thing to be
able to play in another country. So you're pretty good, right?
S2 (15:01):
Well, I played at Biola, so it's I played in college,
but it's, you know, small ball, nothing too special, but
I love it. I mean, basketball was my life growing up.
S1 (15:11):
You've got it here. See, the NCAA is going on.
Do you watch a lot of the NCAA?
S2 (15:15):
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
S1 (15:16):
Okay. Did you see the the story about the kid
from Liberty who was about to get in the basketball game?
There's a minute left and the ref pretended that there
was a wet spot. Did you see.
S2 (15:27):
That? I saw that. So good.
S1 (15:30):
He's going to be on the program on Friday night.
He's going to be here to tell his story. And
you won't believe who he is. Who his mom and
dad and grandfather are. I'm not going to. That's just
a little tease. We in the business, we call it
a tease. So you got to listen to that. But
the ref saw him. Let me ask you that. Did
(15:50):
anybody see you in your life? I know your dad
probably did, but was there any point at which you
were just being who you were and somebody saw you
and it it made a difference in your life?
S2 (16:04):
Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I wouldn't be close to
the person that I am today without several people playing
that role in my life. I mean, I think about
one of the people who influenced me the most is
my my dear friend Dave Parker. When I was a
youth pastor in Seattle, he was our senior pastor. And, uh,
the season that I had under his leadership and mentorship
(16:28):
was really when I transitioned, I think, from being a
boy to a man and then learned to be a husband. And, uh,
I mean, he he taught me so much about what
it means to be a man, what it means to
be a pastor, what it means to be a husband. So,
I mean, he's a dear friend to this day, but
I think back especially to that season and think, man,
he he encouraged me. He spoke truth into my life.
He challenged me when he needed to. And I'll be
(16:51):
forever grateful for that.
S1 (16:52):
Love it. All right. So we're going to talk about
that on Friday. But now but now tell me about LA.
Why la. How did God speak to you through the,
you know, the clouds. You need to go to Los Angeles.
S2 (17:04):
Well, I mean, I do have a pretty amazing God
story of how we ended up there. I mean, I
was finishing up my PhD at Wheaton and was praying
outside the library, and I felt like God put reality
LA into my head. And reality was just my friend's
church in LA. Um, he had he had moved to
LA and started going to reality in the second year
(17:25):
when it was just a small church. And um, and
I called him that day and we told him, like, hey,
I was praying. And I felt like God put reality
la into my head. And we kind of laughed it off.
Wouldn't that be funny? Well, he gets a call the
next day from the the pastor, Tim Chadwick at the time,
who said, hey, we're trying to raise people up from within,
but it's going too slow. We got to find someone
from the outside. My friend connects them and says, I
(17:48):
got your guy and connects the two of us, and
we just hit it off so well. And it was
beautiful because I, you know, you said, why LA? And
ultimately we're there because God's called us there. But God
had really put on my heart and my wife's heart, um,
the desire to be in a city. Um, we I've
been really influenced by Tim Keller in this, but of
(18:10):
seeing a lot of Christians and churches abandon cities and
and yet the cities are where most people are. The
cities are where most culture is being created, and there's
a lot of influence. And yet Christians and churches are
leaving the cities. And so I really just felt a
burden for the lost and for the cities and wanting
(18:31):
to to be able to put down roots and be
in the heart of the city and proclaim the gospel. So, um. Yeah, God.
God led us to that place. And we've been in
Los Angeles since 2013, so it's been over 12 years now,
and I love it there so much. I mean, people
love to hate on LA, right? But but God is
doing a beautiful work there. And it's a it's a
(18:55):
complicated city, like I guess like every city. But LA
puts on display the tension of beauty and brokenness in
this world. We've got the, um, the greatest things about
humanity and the worst things about humanity all crammed into
a small space together. Um, so there's never a dull moment,
but the Lord is at work in really powerful ways.
S1 (19:16):
I want to talk then about that. The uniqueness of
where the church is, and right in the middle of that,
and it parallels with what Paul was doing when he
went to the Areopagus, when he spoke in front of
these people, because there's an awful lot of you mentioned
something about the Scientology is right next door. And tell
(19:38):
me more about what the neighborhood looks like where you worship.
S2 (19:42):
Yeah. I mean, I just like to tell people that
a lot of people think of big cities as being secular. And,
you know, you might think of a New York or
a Boston and, and there's a lot of atheism and whatnot.
I say Los Angeles is hyper religious. Um, and, and
people love kind of drawing from all different kinds of
spiritualities and then bending them around their own personal preference.
(20:04):
But the location of where we're at, where our church
building is and where my family lives in East Hollywood.
I mean, our our neighbor next door is Scientology. And then, uh,
just up the street, we have the church of Self-Realization.
There's a tarot card reader across the street, and then
down the street the other way, you have the Russian
Orthodox Church, the Armenian Orthodox Church. So we are surrounded
(20:28):
by all types of spirituality Actuality and I mean even
my neighbors, none of my neighbors that I know are Christians.
But there's a variety of different spiritualities, and they love
to talk about astrology and, um, all things like that. Yeah. Crystals.
So it's it's a hyper spiritual place in a lot
of ways, but it's certainly not very Christian.
S1 (20:50):
You said that you were at a coffee shop preparing.
You had your Bible there, preparing for a message, and
there are people praying nearby.
S2 (20:58):
Yeah, well, there were people who were talking about praying.
And so I'm, I'm sitting at this coffee shop in
Los Feliz, which is a neighborhood in Los Angeles. And, um,
I'm reading my Bible, prepping for a sermon, and I
hear these two women sitting behind me talking about prayer.
And I just thought it, like, warmed my heart. Like,
here I am, trying to be faithful to Jesus in
(21:19):
a city that's not that's not easy to do. And
I hear these women talking about prayer, and I kind
of just have this thought like, oh, I'm not alone,
you know? But then I overhear one of the one
of the girls say, oh shoot, I forgot my crystals!
And I quickly realized that they weren't getting ready to
pray to Jesus. They were getting ready to talk to
(21:40):
colorful rocks about realizing their potential. And, um, and yeah,
that just that story kind of shows what LA is
like in a lot of ways. And that story wasn't
a fluke. I mean, I think about that coffee shop
where I'm where I was at, and there's a coffee
shop and then a candy shop and then a crystal shop.
Like that's the neighborhood. I mean, I remember my kids school,
(22:03):
which was a block away from there when they were
in elementary school. We went to the this school event,
and they've got all these vendors set up from the neighborhood.
And one of them, they're selling crystals, um, at the school.
You know, we certainly you couldn't talk about Jesus, but
you could sell crystals, you know? Right. Um, so, yeah,
it's it's a very it's a very spiritual place, which, honestly,
(22:25):
I love. I feel like in Los Angeles, people are
really open to having spiritual conversations. And, uh, I mean,
now we're at a point where people are just so
biblically illiterate. They genuinely don't know much about Christianity or
the Bible. They think they do, but it's usually just
associations that they have related to politics or Christians from
(22:48):
the 1950s, or some Christians that they knew who were
hypocrites or something like that. So people have associations, but
when you actually say, oh, can I actually tell you
about Jesus or about the Bible? Like, oh, really? I
didn't know that. I didn't realize that. Um, so I
try and tell people that all the time in our
church of how when we think about evangelism, so many
(23:08):
people think, oh, people already know about Jesus. Well, sure,
they've heard the name Jesus. They've heard things that like,
he died on the cross, but they really don't know
what the Bible is about, what Christianity is about, who
God is, what the gospel means. Um, that stuff is
very foreign. Yeah.
S1 (23:25):
And I saw a video yesterday, and there was a
man who was it was kind of a back and
forth debate, sort of between a Christian and a person
who follows Islam. And the person who follows Islam was
because denying the deity of Jesus and being crucified said, well,
(23:46):
you know, Jesus made mistakes and Jesus forgot things. It's like, well, wait, wait.
Time out. What did Jesus forget? And he said, well,
on the cross he said, My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? So it was, you know, and
he used that. And the Christian said, but do you understand?
That's not Jesus forgetting something. That's that's from Psalm 22.
(24:09):
Jesus was actually talking about the, you know, and he
went through Psalm 22 and the bulls of Bashan surrounding
me and all of this. And you could see the
guy's face is like, I've never heard this before. I
didn't know that. And I think that's where I want
to go with the conversation. We need to take a
break here in a minute. But you say that when
Paul got to the aeropagus, when he was invited to speak,
(24:33):
that he didn't go there to try to win an argument.
He went there with subversive fulfillment. And I've never heard
that phrase used before. And I want you to talk
about that when we come back from a break. If
you go to Livorno, you'll see more about our guest today,
Doctor Jeremy Treat. He serves in LA at a church
in LA. He's been married for 19 years and he
(24:55):
has four daughters. You pray for him. And if you
go to Livorno, we have a link there. You can
find out more about his ministry. He's at Moody Bible
Institute this week. He spoke this morning and he's speaking tomorrow,
and I wanted him to come on and talk about
the pagans in your life, the pagans who are around you,
(25:17):
how to reach them, because a lot of people say, well,
you know, I want to get my zinger in because
that's kind of what happened with that. What I just
mentioned with the Christian and the Muslim, that there was
the zinger, the zinger that came in. You normally don't
win people's hearts with zingers, but you do win people's
hearts when you are have this subversive fulfillment. And we'll
(25:38):
find out what that is straight ahead. As I said,
our number is (877) 548-3675. You can find out more again
at Chris babylift.org. More straight ahead. From Hollywood doctor Jeremy
(26:05):
Treat is joining us today on Chris Fabry Live. We'll
get right back to him after I tell you about clarinet.
Clarinet is a group of people and pregnancy resource centers
around the country who help people choose abundant life. There
are lifelines being thrown out to people in really difficult
situations and unplanned pregnancy. And the president and CEO of Carenet,
(26:26):
Rolland Warren, wrote a book about their approach, which is
not pro-life. It is pro abundant life. They are for
the unborn child. Absolutely. But they're also for the birth mother,
the biological father, everybody in the equation. The book is
titled The Alternative to Abortion Why we must be pro
Abundant Life. If you go to Chris. Org we have
(26:50):
a green connect link right there. You'll see more about it.
The wound in Rawlins life, the experiences that he went
through years ago have, I believe, uniquely given him this
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about the alternative to abortion at Chris Fabriclive. Org click
(27:11):
that green net link today. Chris Fabry Live, where you'll
also find out more about Doctor Jeremy Treat who's joining
us today. You pray for him as he's well? Pray
for him because he's got four daughters and one's getting
ready to take her driver's test. So that's that's enough
to pray about right there. But he's going to be
speaking to Moody students again tomorrow. Uh, so pray about that,
(27:35):
this subversive fulfillment. I want you to describe that. Take
us to acts chapter 17.
S2 (27:40):
Yeah. So the phrase subversive fulfillment was coined by my
friend Dan Strange. But the idea is really present in
acts 17. And what you have there is Paul goes
into Athens. It's this pagan city. And by pagan I
mean they believe in a bunch of different gods. And
so he walks through Athens. It's the cultural capital of
the world. There's theaters and gymnasiums and temples everywhere. And
(28:04):
Paul is is reasoning in the marketplace, in the synagogue.
And the people hear about his teachings and they invite
him to come to the Areopagus, which the Areopagus is
this open forum place where people would come and give talks,
and then judges would weigh their speeches. And so Paul
goes before and here's the question. How does he approach
them in this and the way a lot of people
(28:25):
think about how do you approach the world that doesn't
recognize the kingship of Christ? They they have a combative approach,
so that they think that it has to be an
us versus them approach where it's, you're wrong, I'm right.
And for you to become a Christian, you have to
lose an argument. But Paul does something different, and I
call it subversive fulfillment, where essentially you affirm the longings.
(28:46):
You challenge the method of how people are trying to
fulfill those longings, and then you redirect them to Jesus
as the true fulfillment. So that's what Paul does. I mean,
he starts off at the Areopagus and he says, Men
of Athens. I perceive that in every way. You are
very religious. So he's affirming their religious longings. But then
he goes through and says, but the gods that you
(29:06):
worship are idols. They're they're man made, like they need you.
So how can you worship them as God? So he
challenges the method, and then he gets to the resurrection
of Jesus Christ and points to Jesus as the fulfillment
for their longings. And so that's how I think that
we should approach our society today. Rather than just coming in.
(29:27):
You're wrong. I'm right. You need to convert. It's saying, okay,
you have religious longings. You were made to worship, and
your longings for freedom and for joy and for satisfaction
and peace. Those are good longings. But you're trying to
fulfill them by running to false gods, to idols that
can't keep their promises, and then point people to Jesus
as the true fulfillment.
S1 (29:49):
Okay, so take us to the response then, because, you know,
you'd think that if the power of God is here
and you know everything in the book of acts, a
lot of great things happen. But talk about the response,
what happened? What was the outcome?
S2 (30:06):
Yeah. So it's interesting what you see at the end
of acts, as it says that some people mocked him.
Some people still had questions. So they were interested, but
they needed to hear more. And then some people Uh,
believed and they became followers of Jesus. In fact, even
Dionysius the Areopagite became a believer. So somebody who's named
after the place. So that's significant. But I think it's
(30:28):
important to recognize that we shouldn't have an ends justifies
the means approach when it comes to how we share
the gospel or how we engage our society today. I mean,
Jesus was the best preacher of all time, and they
crucified him, right? Let alone not everyone agreed with what
he said. So I think God calls us to be
faithful in proclaiming the gospel in in as winsome and
(30:51):
as persuasive of ways as we possibly can, but ultimately
to be able to trust God with the results of
that of we can't change people's hearts, but we can
point them to the one who can.
S1 (31:02):
I wonder what happened in Paul's heart with that response.
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, son
began to ridicule. Others said, we'd like to hear from
you again. Um, and then you talked about Damaris as
well as Dionysius. I wonder if he felt like he
was a success or not.
S2 (31:21):
Yeah, I mean, that's a tricky thing because I as
a preacher, I'm often tempted to equate success with results.
And I think that's the wrong approach. I think success
as a preacher is faithfulness. And my in my faithfully
preaching the word, am I proclaiming the good news of
(31:43):
Jesus Christ and calling people to trust him? If I'm
doing that, then I can sleep well and I can.
I can just leave the results up to God in that.
I mean, Jeremiah faithfully preached the word and nobody listened
to him for 20 years, right? And so I think
we need to be careful with that, because sometimes people
will be unfaithful and God will still save people through it. Right?
(32:07):
So we have to be careful of I want to
strive for faithfulness in my preaching. And usually fruitfulness comes
from faithfulness, but not always.
S1 (32:16):
Well, I'm thinking about the person who's listening who in
a work context. And you've been praying for a person
for years and years and years. Or maybe it's in
your family and get back to the praying parent thing.
You know, your son or daughter raised them in the
church and now they've gone out the door. You talked
about that as well. The millions of people in different
(32:36):
age groups who say, it's not this, this is not
for me anymore. And that continual struggle on the inside
to believe that I can say something, or I can
do something that will switch the flip, flip the switch
for that person that I care about. And and we can't,
you know, that is something that only God can do.
(32:58):
But but we're called to be a part of the process, right?
S2 (33:02):
Yeah, 100%. And I think you see that tension throughout
the New Testament of work out your salvation with fear
and trembling. Right. That like, it's okay, it's God saves.
And yet I'm called to strive from that place of
being saved. And when I preach the gospel, I'm preaching
believing that people are saved through the word proclaimed, right?
(33:24):
And they encounter Christ in that. But I can't manufacture it.
I can't make that happen myself.
S1 (33:30):
Right? There's a catch phrase, and I don't know if
if you went through, you had to hire somebody to
come tell you this or if it just kind of
bubbled up. But it's Jesus changes everything. Mhm. Um, and
we like to say around here at Moody Radio the
gospel changes everything. And it does but this, this idea
(33:50):
of Jesus changing everything. If you keep him the main thing,
then something good is going to happen with the people
that you come in contact with, right?
S2 (34:00):
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that phrase summarizes the essence
of our DNA as a church. And we say Jesus
changes everything all the time because it starts with Jesus.
But then Jesus brings transformation and renewal in our lives.
It's about what he's done for us and then it
impacts every aspect of our life. He doesn't just want
to change your soul. He wants to impact your your
(34:24):
relationships and your emotions and your finances and your sexuality
and your hobbies, every aspect of your life. So, I mean,
that just boils it down to such a simple message
that Jesus changes everything.
S1 (34:34):
Yeah. I want to talk with you about that, because
in the the melting pot that is Los Angeles and
now you're in Chicago and we can talk about New
York and other big cities around the country. There are
all these signs of people looking at self, you know,
for fulfillment. But there's also these touch points of people
(34:55):
buying Bibles, you know, like, like never before or the
or the sales of them going up. I think there
is something going on. I want to hear what you
have to say about that. When we come back from
a break. This is Chris Fabry live on Moody Radio.
Go to the website. We'd love to have you go there.
You can find out more about Doctor Jeremy Treat and
some of the things that he has done and is doing.
(35:17):
Go to Chris Fabry Live.com. There's more coming up straight
ahead right here on Moody Radio.
S3 (35:34):
What a treat to have Doctor.
S1 (35:35):
Jeremy treat with us at the radio backyard fence today.
Go to the website. You can find out more. Chris Fabry,
thanks for your support at the back fence. We'd love
to hear from you this month. Uh, some great programs
coming up for you. We talk about Jesus being unhurried
tomorrow on the program. And then we're going to talk
(35:56):
about when somebody saw you. You can't you've got to
hear the conversation with the basketball player for Liberty. Who's
the ref saw him. And and the, the hard part
of that story was he didn't like what went out
on social media. He really didn't like all the attention
that he got when he went viral. You'll hear that
(36:18):
Jake will talk about it on Friday. But now, Doctor
Jeremy treat. Okay, so how do we do this? How
do we live out what you're talking about, this subversive
fulfillment and and dealing with the pagans in our society
and trying to bring Jesus to them?
S2 (36:35):
Yeah. I mean, that's such an important question, because I
do think that acts 17 helps us know how to
live today in the world that we're living in. So
I'll just give you an example. I went walking through
Hollywood one day and tried to do what Paul did
and observe my city. And I too came to a
place of saying, wow, Los Angeles, you you are very religious.
And I saw objects of worship all around me. And
(36:58):
I'll give you an example of one of them that
was really obvious in LA. And that is the object
of worship, of fame. Uh, people come to LA to
make it, to it, to be discovered, to be famous.
And that's everybody's trying for that in LA. And so
how do we approach fame as Christians? Well, a lot
of people would have a combative mindset and just say,
(37:19):
that's just pure pride and narcissism, and you just need
to stop doing that. Well, let's think about it through
the lens of acts 17 and subversive fulfillment. So I
would say let's start by affirming the longings. I think
there's actually a deep religious impulse at the core of
this that people are longing for glory. They're made for more.
They're made to be in awe and wonder of something
(37:41):
bigger than themselves. So we can acknowledge that and affirm
that longing. But then we need to be able to
press against it and challenge the method and say, yeah,
but you're just running after, uh, you're running after like
a cheap substitute for fame or for glory by going
after fame. And you can see celebrity after celebrity who
(38:02):
gets fame and then is still miserable is Jim Carrey,
who said, I wish everybody could get famous so that
they could realize it doesn't make you happy. So you
can kind of see how that's empty. And then we
want to point people to Jesus as the fulfillment, redirect
them and say, you're longing for glory can be fulfilled
in Jesus. He's the radiance of the glory of God.
(38:24):
And so you don't need to settle for a cheap
substitute of fame when you can behold the glory of
God in the face of Jesus. So that's just one
example of how we would approach something.
S1 (38:33):
We can do the same thing though, in the church.
A blood bought believer can can run after that kind
of fame and just kind of Christianize it as well.
S2 (38:43):
Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. And honestly, people who are in ministry,
there's a really strong temptation with this. And I think
the church in America has given in to that temptation
in a lot of ways. Where there's a celebrity culture,
there's a consumerism that mirrors our society today. So I
appreciate you saying that because I think acts 17 isn't
just for the world out there. It's for us as well.
(39:04):
And we need to be able to recognize how we've
run after idols instead of God, even if it's the
idol of ministry success.
S1 (39:11):
What about the person? And LA is is kind of again,
this melting pot. The person whose identity is all about
their sexual orientation. And that is, you know, you've got
to agree with me about this and my life and
this because this is who I am. And if you reject.
How do you deal with somebody who's bought into that
(39:34):
other idol?
S2 (39:36):
Yeah. So I mean, let's think about it through the
subversive fulfillment lens is rather than coming at them and
just saying you're wrong, the Bible says this and you
need to change. You can go to them and say, okay,
it's it's good that you're longing to understand who you are, right?
Like Jesus even talks about, you know, finding yourself. And
he doesn't say that that's necessarily a bad thing. He
(39:57):
just says that you do it by denying yourself, not
by obsessing over yourself. And so I'd want to start
with someone and say, that's a good longing, but. But
I would question anyone building their identity on their desires
with anything, not just sexuality, but I don't. How can
we build our identity on something that could change like that,
or that conflicts with other desires that we have? So
(40:20):
I would say, don't build your identity on anything that's fleeting.
And so the thing that we can build our identity
on is Jesus. And that gives us an unshakable foundation
for our identity, because it's an identity that's not achieved
through our works, but it's received by faith. And so
then you can trust God, who gives us an identity.
S1 (40:43):
And that, you know all the stories about the foreign
missionaries who went to places and took the caskets with them, basically,
you know, because a lot of people would die there
who didn't see much response at all, but who were faithful,
or those who were translating God's word into a different
language and and died before it was the whole process
(41:06):
was finished. All of that. God uses that. So we
dare not judge things on on the measure things on this,
what we perceive as success. Right?
S2 (41:18):
Oh, 100%. I mean, like, look, I got to preach
to hundreds of moody students this morning and it's amazing.
And I'm, I'm preaching as a way of serving the Lord.
But what people are doing in the situations that you described, man,
that's just as important, if not more important for the kingdom.
And it's not just that of people doing that in
a majority world country or something like that. I think
(41:38):
about small town pastors who are faithfully preaching the word
and shepherding people, and they're not getting attention. They're not
getting invited onto radio shows, anything like that. Their work
is just as important as what I'm doing in a
big city like Los Angeles, or what anybody is doing anywhere.
S1 (41:54):
What do you see happening in the world? Because I
mentioned the Bible sales and all that it feels like
to me. And on college campuses and things that are
happening even in the sports world, I'm seeing this, that
there is something that's going on and I don't I
dare not just run and say revival or an awakening,
(42:15):
but at the same time, I don't want to dismiss
that either. What are you seeing?
S2 (42:19):
Yeah, I mean, I see I see a spiritual hunger
in our society today that's stronger than I've seen in
a long time. And I'm seeing that in Los Angeles
from neighbors, people in coffee shops who would have never
been open to coming to church, who are asking to
come to church, or people who would never be open
to spiritual conversations, who want to talk about Jesus. I
(42:42):
think so many people today are disillusioned with what the
world is offering, and they're looking for something sturdy to
stand on. They're looking for a hope that actually lasts,
and that's available in Christ. So I think this is
such an important time for the church to rise up
and to really boldly proclaim Jesus as the hope of
the world.
S1 (43:02):
One of the books that you wrote is about the atonement,
and we're coming up on that, that great week where
Jesus walked through and and did for us what we
could not do for ourselves, that is, offer himself for us.
Is this going to be a special week at your church?
S2 (43:18):
Oh, yeah. I mean, it always is. And I think
that I'm excited about it because what Jesus did on
the cross is the multidimensional remedy for our multidimensional problem.
And what I mean by that is, for so many people,
they only think of the cross as the forgiveness of
the forgiveness of sins. And I say, yes, praise God.
(43:39):
That's central, um, to what Jesus accomplishes. But while that's correct,
it's not complete. And we need to recognize how the
cross is the remedy to all of our problems. It's
it's through the cross that our shame is cleansed. It's
through the cross that we are adopted into a family.
It's through the cross that we experience victory over demonic
(44:00):
powers in our life. So I think the more people
can see the beauty and the glory and the power
of the cross and all that Jesus did, the more
it applies to every aspect of our lives, and we
want to proclaim that as loud as we can.
S1 (44:15):
And if there's somebody listening right now and it's I.
I've been to church before and I believe this Jesus
thing and I, you know, that's all good for you.
But I don't know if it's going to work for me.
What do you say to the person who is thinking, uh,
I don't I don't know about this Christian thing.
S2 (44:32):
I think I would want to say, I would want
to say to them, I hope that you would genuinely
seek to understand it, so that if you reject it,
you at least know what you're rejecting. I think a
lot of people reject a caricature of Christ because they
they heard a Christian say something, they saw a certain thing,
and they say, I don't want any of that. When
(44:54):
I think in reality that they they haven't really seen
the real Jesus. I mean, imagine, imagine a fourth grader
playing Beethoven on the piano and somebody listening to it
and they say, ah, I'm not really into Beethoven. It's
not really. It's just it's just not my thing. It's
not that good, you know? He's not he's really not
that great. Well, you'd say no, no, no, no. Like,
(45:14):
that wasn't the real thing. Like, that was somebody who's
trying to mimic him. And I think a lot of
people have seen the mistakes of Christians and rejected Christianity.
And I would say, look to Christ. Find out who
he really is.
S4 (45:27):
That's really good.
S1 (45:28):
That is really good. I've never heard that analogy about
the people playing, uh, fourth grade playing Beethoven.
S2 (45:33):
I got it from my friend Glen Scrivener. I don't
know if he got it from somebody else.
S1 (45:37):
Thank you. Glen, but, um, there there are a lot
of fourth graders that are playing Beethoven pretty well these days, but, um,
I can't thank you enough, Jeremy, for spending the time
with us today. Just tell us a little bit about
your ministry, the way you look at life, what you
shared with the students, what are you going to share
tomorrow with them.
S2 (45:56):
Yeah. Tomorrow we're going to be talking about Jesus's holistic mission,
how he came and proclaimed the gospel and cared for
people's needs. Word and deed. Gospel and justice. And we
get to participate in his holistic mission.
S1 (46:12):
Love it. God bless you, friend. And folks. Pray for
Jeremy and his message that it will really be powerful
in the hearts of and the lives of the students,
and come back and see us next time. Bring your
kids and your wife with us. Would you do.
S2 (46:24):
It? Yeah. That's right. Thanks, Chris.
S3 (46:25):
Okay.
S1 (46:26):
God bless you. Jeremy, treat. Doctor. Jeremy, treat our guest
today at the radio backyard fence. Find out more about him.
Click through today's information right there at Chris Fabry Live.
Do you feel hurried and rushed? Got to hear the
program tomorrow right here on Chris Fabry live production of
Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Chris Fabry Live! There
is a theological lectureship going on at Moody Bible Institute
today and tomorrow. And when I saw there's a pastor
from Hollywood who's going to speak, I said, I want
to have a conversation with this fellow. So you're going
to meet Doctor Jeremy Treat today who is pastor for
Preaching and Vision at Reality LA, Reality Church, LA. And
(00:30):
his message today was about where you're living every day,
where we're both living. And that is how do you
proclaim Jesus in a pagan society? How do you live
the truth of the gospel and speak the truth that
Jesus changes everything? If that is a question on your
soul in your context and you want to communicate that
(00:51):
to the people you care about, join us today at
the Radio Backyard Fence. You can find out more online.
Chris Fabriclive. Org. Big thank you to our team. Ryan
Carnegie doing all things technical. Trish is our producer. Amy's
in the chair today. Anthony will be answering your calls.
And one more group. Thank you, friends and partners, for
your support. We can't do what we do without your help.
(01:12):
This month of April, it's only the second, but we're
starting the ground running. Our. Thank you. This month is
a little book that might be a game changer for you.
Let me ask you this. Do you have a son
or a daughter? Maybe a grandson or granddaughter who's on
your heart today for some reason? What if, instead of
simply worrying and being anxious about them and about the
(01:33):
choices they're making and about, you know, all the things
that make you anxious, what if you're concerned for them,
could be turned into a greater dependence on the power
of God? So you begin to pray scriptural prayers for
them rather than bless them and and help them, you know,
turn them to your heart, draw them to you. All
(01:54):
good prayers. But what if you prayed specific scriptural Prayers
and in the process you are changed as you lean
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granddaughter or relative, give a gift of any size at
archive.org or you can call the number 866953 Doctor Erwin
(02:17):
Lutzer book, A Practical Guide for Praying Parents. We've given
this before, but I'm coming back to it today because
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A Practical guide for praying parents go to Chris Fabry live.
And for those who are new and you don't know
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(02:40):
Fabry Chris Fabry live 866953. It's understandable that you're anxious.
Take that anxiety and let it make you become a
praying parent. All right. So many moons ago, I was
a student at Moody Bible Institute. They could only handle
me for a year, but I learned a lot and
(03:01):
I loved the classes. I loved the professors who spoke
into my life, who answered a lot of the questions
that I had back then. But there were people who
came and spoke in chapel one, two, you know, a
week here, a few days there. I still remember some
of those messages from home. It's been a long time,
40 years. Doctor Jeremy Treat spoke about proclaiming Christ in
(03:23):
a pagan society today from acts chapter 17. If you're
playing the home game, you can get your New Testament out.
And I've asked him to join us. He has a
PhD in theology. I asked him before the program, so where?
What schools? Biola, Seattle, Pacific, Fuller, Trinity and Wheaton. You
passed by Moody. You got really close. And he is
(03:46):
pastor for Preaching and vision at Reality Church. LA doctor treat.
How are you doing today?
S2 (03:51):
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on, Chris.
S1 (03:53):
I'm so glad I got to see your message. Our
listeners probably didn't, but I got to see that. I
want to ask you about it, but let me start
with you for a primer on who Jeremy Treat is.
You grew up in Alaska, is that right?
S2 (04:04):
Yeah. That's right.
S1 (04:05):
Where what did you want to do when you were
a kid?
S2 (04:07):
Oh, man. Well, I mean, I grew up in a
small town in Alaska. My dad was a cabinetmaker, so
I grew up in the shop building stuff and wanted
to be like my dad. Um, I started playing basketball
in fourth grade. Most kids in Alaska play hockey, but, uh,
hockey is an expensive sport. And there was four of us,
and my parents told me to find something else. And
(04:28):
so I picked basketball. And I loved basketball. So that
became my dream. From that point on, I wanted to
be an NBA player. That was my goal.
S1 (04:35):
And now you're in LA, so you can probably go
try out, right?
S2 (04:39):
That's right. Yeah, yeah I'm in LA. But there's there's
a few good basketball players there already.
S1 (04:44):
So that's what I hear. Yeah. That's what they tell me. Um,
so growing up in and having a cabinetmaker, a carpenter
for a father, that probably is not lost on.
S2 (04:54):
You, right? Right, right.
S1 (04:56):
What? What did you learn from your dad that you
couldn't learn from anybody else?
S2 (05:00):
Oh, man. I mean, my dad's my hero in so
many ways. He my my dad is my hero because
he gave me everything that he never had. Um, my
dad had a really rough childhood growing up in Kansas, and, uh,
he was able to, by God's grace, uh, prevail through
that and grow and cling to God's grace and then
(05:22):
be the father to me and my siblings that he
never had. And I grew up knowing that I was
loved and being pointed to the Lord. And he never
had any of that. And the trajectory of all kinds
of really horrific stuff really stopped with him. And so, yeah, my,
my dad means so much to me to this day.
(05:43):
I have a great relationship with him and, and praise
God for all the work that he's done in his
life and how I'm able to experience the fruit in
so many blessings that come with his sacrifice and his
willingness to cling to God's grace amidst difficult times.
S1 (05:58):
We had Pat Morley on yesterday, and we talked about
going from broken boy to mended man, and he said
the same thing about his own dad and the trajectory
in his own father's life. So how how did your
dad break that cycle then, in his own life?
S2 (06:17):
Well, I won't get into the particular cycles, but there
was a lot of different abuse and, um, hardship in
his life. And I think God did a work in
his life of teaching him to cling to him. And,
you know, I always my, my dad is I thought
of my dad growing up as he's such a strong man.
I mean, he's, you know, carpenter swinging a hammer and
(06:39):
could do anything. But I also I also saw that
he was strong because he was like like it talks
about in Second Corinthians 12, he was able to embrace
his own weakness as a way of experiencing God's strength.
And I think as I grew up, I started recognizing
that that my dad's not just strong. God is strong,
(07:02):
and he's showing his strength through him. And it's actually
the way that the sufficiency of God's grace worked in
my dad's life that made him who he was and
made him the dad that he is to me and
my siblings. So, yeah, I mean, God, God has just
made him who he is through hardship in so many ways.
(07:23):
And so God's grace shines through and through.
S1 (07:26):
And that tension, I think that's one of the things
in the message that you gave today to the students
at Moody. That tension inside is, I really want to
do great things for God. I really want to, you know,
I want to impress him. I want my identity to
be and fill in the blank whatever it is that
I do for God. And it says in your bio
(07:47):
that as a teenager you grasped Christianity wasn't about what
you could do for God, but about what he did
for you in Christ. And it sounds like that's what
your dad grabbed a hold of. And then you caught
the same vision. Is that true?
S2 (08:02):
Yeah. I mean, I, you know, for me, I grew
up with my parents pointing me to the Lord and
and teaching me the Bible, and they were great. But
the churches that I grew up in, I would say
in general, had a culture of emphasizing external obedience. And
it's it's all about you better keep the rules or
God's going to be upset with you. And I the
(08:25):
thing about me is I'm a I'm I'm competitive. I,
I will rise to the occasion. I'll get things done.
I'm accomplishment driven. And so I kind of learned how
to play the game. And I got good at keeping
certain rules. But I also learned that I just needed
to act that way at church. Um, and so I think,
you know, as a teenager, I was really self-righteous. I mean,
(08:48):
I had this kind of pride and this genuine attitude
that I thought God was lucky to have me on
his team. And I remember reading the New Testament and
seeing Jesus confront the Pharisees and realize, like seeing myself
in them and realizing, oh, like I'm I'm a part
of the group that Jesus confronts. And it wasn't until
(09:12):
God really exposed my sin and my need for grace
that I understood the beauty of the gospel. And I recognize.
S1 (09:20):
Painful, isn't it?
S2 (09:21):
Yeah.
S1 (09:21):
Is it painful to see yourself there? Because everybody wants
to be, you know. Well, I'm Peter and I, you know.
But but when you see yourself as the Pharisees, that's hard.
S2 (09:30):
But the amazing thing about it was, is that it
wasn't even sequential. It was like simultaneous as as God
was exposing the ugliness of my pride and my heart.
He was, at the same time, like pouring out his
mercy upon me. And so there was just this sense
of like, oh, I'm such a sinner and Christ is
such a great savior. And that changed everything for me
(09:54):
of of recognizing. Yeah, it's about what God's done for me.
And then that produces a life of where I'm living
for him and following his rules and obeying him. But
it's it's not doing that to earn God's approval. It's
doing it from a place of already receiving his approval
by grace. And so that's why, for me, I mean,
(10:15):
what happened to me as a teenager is it's the
same type of prayer that I prayed this morning of saying, God,
I know that you've accepted me. You love me. You're
for me. Help me to live in light of that
today for your glory. Now. So that's why, for me,
I just. I need to keep coming back to the
gospel every day and applying it to my life.
S1 (10:35):
Without leaning on the outcome, you know, without leaning on God.
If you do this for me, then I'm a success.
Or even the response of the to the students, and
I know I heard them responding to you. Well, but
you you preached about Paul in the Areopagus. And if
you get to the end of that and you look
(10:55):
at you look at how they responded to him, he
spoke the truth. He he was in that context. You know,
he gave them the truth and a kind of affirmed
them in how religious they were and then said, you're
a little off track here. But their response, we don't
control that response. And that's hard for somebody who, it
sounds like in your life is a lot like mine.
(11:17):
It's like there's a certain amount of control that you've had.
And if I can do this, if I can fix
the outcome over here, then I want to do that.
And when it doesn't turn out well, it's like, uh,
Mary and Martha and Lazarus, you know? Jesus, if you'd
shown up, then. Okay, so there's a lot to talk
about here with Doctor Treat. And I want you to
get into the conversation as well. Maybe something that we
(11:38):
say in this hour is going to push a button
in your heart, and we'll talk with us. (877) 548-3675. Not
Your Treat is written about the atonement. He's written about
seeking first the kingdom of God and the crucified King
as well. You'll find out more at Chris Farrell. Doctor
(12:11):
Jeremy Treat is joining us today in the studio on
Chris Fabry Live. He is pastor for Preaching and Vision
at Reality LA. Go to the website. It's really interesting
to see because the church is right in the heart.
I think you said in the message that it's right
next to Netflix on Sunset Boulevard. Is that right?
S2 (12:31):
Yeah, that's where we meet on Sundays. Yeah.
S1 (12:33):
Okay. Uh, and and you also meet in. Is it
a multi-site church?
S2 (12:38):
Well, we so we've met in a high school for
the last 16 years, but five years ago we were
given a small church building and an office building. And
so the the church building, office building that we own now,
that's kind of our hub throughout the week. And then
we do an evening, a small evening service there. But
our morning service, which is our bigger service, is in
(13:00):
the high school that's on Sunset Boulevard or our church
building that we call the Hope center is down the
street in East Hollywood.
S1 (13:07):
Got it. So it's a complicated story, but it's a
good one, right?
S2 (13:11):
It's a great story. Story of redemption.
S1 (13:13):
Okay. And I always like to know, because our listeners,
you know, again, didn't get to hear your message, but
they want to know a little bit more about you
and how you got to be where you are. And
I have to ask you about Tiffany. You've been married
to Tiffany 19 years. You have four girls, ten, 12, 13, 15. Um,
so tell me, how did you know Tiffany was the one?
S2 (13:35):
Oh, man. Uh, well, it's a fun story of how
we met. I went on a on a basketball trip
with athletes in action. So I was I joined a
team of other college basketball players, and we were going
to go to Africa for a month and play national
teams and share the gospel and all that. And so
I get placed on this team and we do our
training camp in small town Indiana and, um, we stay
(13:57):
in host families there. Long story short, I ended up
marrying the coach's daughter. And so my wife, Tiffany, her
dad was my coach, her mom was the team nurse
and her brother was the point guard. So I spent
three weeks with her family in Africa. And then we
just we kept in touch. After that, we went from
emailing to calling to visiting and then five years later
(14:19):
ended up getting married. So yeah, we're coming up on
20 years this August. And I love my wife so much.
She's my best friend and the most godly person that
I know, and we have a lot of fun together.
And yeah, we have we have four girls, so there's
never a dull moment in our house. I love it,
I love being a girl dad. They are the sweetest
and they've got my heart. Yeah. And it's a fun
(14:42):
season right now. I mean, they are they're becoming little women.
And I'm so proud as a dad seeing who they're
who they're becoming.
S1 (14:50):
Well, if you were an athlete with athletes in action,
you must be pretty good. I mean, you it's one
thing to shoot a basketball. It's another thing to be
able to play in another country. So you're pretty good, right?
S2 (15:01):
Well, I played at Biola, so it's I played in college,
but it's, you know, small ball, nothing too special, but
I love it. I mean, basketball was my life growing up.
S1 (15:11):
You've got it here. See, the NCAA is going on.
Do you watch a lot of the NCAA?
S2 (15:15):
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
S1 (15:16):
Okay. Did you see the the story about the kid
from Liberty who was about to get in the basketball game?
There's a minute left and the ref pretended that there
was a wet spot. Did you see.
S2 (15:27):
That? I saw that. So good.
S1 (15:30):
He's going to be on the program on Friday night.
He's going to be here to tell his story. And
you won't believe who he is. Who his mom and
dad and grandfather are. I'm not going to. That's just
a little tease. We in the business, we call it
a tease. So you got to listen to that. But
the ref saw him. Let me ask you that. Did
(15:50):
anybody see you in your life? I know your dad
probably did, but was there any point at which you
were just being who you were and somebody saw you
and it it made a difference in your life?
S2 (16:04):
Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I wouldn't be close to
the person that I am today without several people playing
that role in my life. I mean, I think about
one of the people who influenced me the most is
my my dear friend Dave Parker. When I was a
youth pastor in Seattle, he was our senior pastor. And, uh,
the season that I had under his leadership and mentorship
(16:28):
was really when I transitioned, I think, from being a
boy to a man and then learned to be a husband. And, uh,
I mean, he he taught me so much about what
it means to be a man, what it means to
be a pastor, what it means to be a husband. So,
I mean, he's a dear friend to this day, but
I think back especially to that season and think, man,
he he encouraged me. He spoke truth into my life.
He challenged me when he needed to. And I'll be
(16:51):
forever grateful for that.
S1 (16:52):
Love it. All right. So we're going to talk about
that on Friday. But now but now tell me about LA.
Why la. How did God speak to you through the,
you know, the clouds. You need to go to Los Angeles.
S2 (17:04):
Well, I mean, I do have a pretty amazing God
story of how we ended up there. I mean, I
was finishing up my PhD at Wheaton and was praying
outside the library, and I felt like God put reality
LA into my head. And reality was just my friend's
church in LA. Um, he had he had moved to
LA and started going to reality in the second year
(17:25):
when it was just a small church. And um, and
I called him that day and we told him, like, hey,
I was praying. And I felt like God put reality
la into my head. And we kind of laughed it off.
Wouldn't that be funny? Well, he gets a call the
next day from the the pastor, Tim Chadwick at the time,
who said, hey, we're trying to raise people up from within,
but it's going too slow. We got to find someone
from the outside. My friend connects them and says, I
(17:48):
got your guy and connects the two of us, and
we just hit it off so well. And it was
beautiful because I, you know, you said, why LA? And
ultimately we're there because God's called us there. But God
had really put on my heart and my wife's heart, um,
the desire to be in a city. Um, we I've
been really influenced by Tim Keller in this, but of
(18:10):
seeing a lot of Christians and churches abandon cities and
and yet the cities are where most people are. The
cities are where most culture is being created, and there's
a lot of influence. And yet Christians and churches are
leaving the cities. And so I really just felt a
burden for the lost and for the cities and wanting
(18:31):
to to be able to put down roots and be
in the heart of the city and proclaim the gospel. So, um. Yeah, God.
God led us to that place. And we've been in
Los Angeles since 2013, so it's been over 12 years now,
and I love it there so much. I mean, people
love to hate on LA, right? But but God is
doing a beautiful work there. And it's a it's a
(18:55):
complicated city, like I guess like every city. But LA
puts on display the tension of beauty and brokenness in
this world. We've got the, um, the greatest things about
humanity and the worst things about humanity all crammed into
a small space together. Um, so there's never a dull moment,
but the Lord is at work in really powerful ways.
S1 (19:16):
I want to talk then about that. The uniqueness of
where the church is, and right in the middle of that,
and it parallels with what Paul was doing when he
went to the Areopagus, when he spoke in front of
these people, because there's an awful lot of you mentioned
something about the Scientology is right next door. And tell
(19:38):
me more about what the neighborhood looks like where you worship.
S2 (19:42):
Yeah. I mean, I just like to tell people that
a lot of people think of big cities as being secular. And,
you know, you might think of a New York or
a Boston and, and there's a lot of atheism and whatnot.
I say Los Angeles is hyper religious. Um, and, and
people love kind of drawing from all different kinds of
spiritualities and then bending them around their own personal preference.
(20:04):
But the location of where we're at, where our church
building is and where my family lives in East Hollywood.
I mean, our our neighbor next door is Scientology. And then, uh,
just up the street, we have the church of Self-Realization.
There's a tarot card reader across the street, and then
down the street the other way, you have the Russian
Orthodox Church, the Armenian Orthodox Church. So we are surrounded
(20:28):
by all types of spirituality Actuality and I mean even
my neighbors, none of my neighbors that I know are Christians.
But there's a variety of different spiritualities, and they love
to talk about astrology and, um, all things like that. Yeah. Crystals.
So it's it's a hyper spiritual place in a lot
of ways, but it's certainly not very Christian.
S1 (20:50):
You said that you were at a coffee shop preparing.
You had your Bible there, preparing for a message, and
there are people praying nearby.
S2 (20:58):
Yeah, well, there were people who were talking about praying.
And so I'm, I'm sitting at this coffee shop in
Los Feliz, which is a neighborhood in Los Angeles. And, um,
I'm reading my Bible, prepping for a sermon, and I
hear these two women sitting behind me talking about prayer.
And I just thought it, like, warmed my heart. Like,
here I am, trying to be faithful to Jesus in
(21:19):
a city that's not that's not easy to do. And
I hear these women talking about prayer, and I kind
of just have this thought like, oh, I'm not alone,
you know? But then I overhear one of the one
of the girls say, oh shoot, I forgot my crystals!
And I quickly realized that they weren't getting ready to
pray to Jesus. They were getting ready to talk to
(21:40):
colorful rocks about realizing their potential. And, um, and yeah,
that just that story kind of shows what LA is
like in a lot of ways. And that story wasn't
a fluke. I mean, I think about that coffee shop
where I'm where I was at, and there's a coffee
shop and then a candy shop and then a crystal shop.
Like that's the neighborhood. I mean, I remember my kids school,
(22:03):
which was a block away from there when they were
in elementary school. We went to the this school event,
and they've got all these vendors set up from the neighborhood.
And one of them, they're selling crystals, um, at the school.
You know, we certainly you couldn't talk about Jesus, but
you could sell crystals, you know? Right. Um, so, yeah,
it's it's a very it's a very spiritual place, which, honestly,
(22:25):
I love. I feel like in Los Angeles, people are
really open to having spiritual conversations. And, uh, I mean,
now we're at a point where people are just so
biblically illiterate. They genuinely don't know much about Christianity or
the Bible. They think they do, but it's usually just
associations that they have related to politics or Christians from
(22:48):
the 1950s, or some Christians that they knew who were
hypocrites or something like that. So people have associations, but
when you actually say, oh, can I actually tell you
about Jesus or about the Bible? Like, oh, really? I
didn't know that. I didn't realize that. Um, so I
try and tell people that all the time in our
church of how when we think about evangelism, so many
(23:08):
people think, oh, people already know about Jesus. Well, sure,
they've heard the name Jesus. They've heard things that like,
he died on the cross, but they really don't know
what the Bible is about, what Christianity is about, who
God is, what the gospel means. Um, that stuff is
very foreign. Yeah.
S1 (23:25):
And I saw a video yesterday, and there was a
man who was it was kind of a back and
forth debate, sort of between a Christian and a person
who follows Islam. And the person who follows Islam was
because denying the deity of Jesus and being crucified said, well,
(23:46):
you know, Jesus made mistakes and Jesus forgot things. It's like, well, wait, wait.
Time out. What did Jesus forget? And he said, well,
on the cross he said, My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? So it was, you know, and
he used that. And the Christian said, but do you understand?
That's not Jesus forgetting something. That's that's from Psalm 22.
(24:09):
Jesus was actually talking about the, you know, and he
went through Psalm 22 and the bulls of Bashan surrounding
me and all of this. And you could see the
guy's face is like, I've never heard this before. I
didn't know that. And I think that's where I want
to go with the conversation. We need to take a
break here in a minute. But you say that when
Paul got to the aeropagus, when he was invited to speak,
(24:33):
that he didn't go there to try to win an argument.
He went there with subversive fulfillment. And I've never heard
that phrase used before. And I want you to talk
about that when we come back from a break. If
you go to Livorno, you'll see more about our guest today,
Doctor Jeremy Treat. He serves in LA at a church
in LA. He's been married for 19 years and he
(24:55):
has four daughters. You pray for him. And if you
go to Livorno, we have a link there. You can
find out more about his ministry. He's at Moody Bible
Institute this week. He spoke this morning and he's speaking tomorrow,
and I wanted him to come on and talk about
the pagans in your life, the pagans who are around you,
(25:17):
how to reach them, because a lot of people say, well,
you know, I want to get my zinger in because
that's kind of what happened with that. What I just
mentioned with the Christian and the Muslim, that there was
the zinger, the zinger that came in. You normally don't
win people's hearts with zingers, but you do win people's
hearts when you are have this subversive fulfillment. And we'll
(25:38):
find out what that is straight ahead. As I said,
our number is (877) 548-3675. You can find out more again
at Chris babylift.org. More straight ahead. From Hollywood doctor Jeremy
(26:05):
Treat is joining us today on Chris Fabry Live. We'll
get right back to him after I tell you about clarinet.
Clarinet is a group of people and pregnancy resource centers
around the country who help people choose abundant life. There
are lifelines being thrown out to people in really difficult
situations and unplanned pregnancy. And the president and CEO of Carenet,
(26:26):
Rolland Warren, wrote a book about their approach, which is
not pro-life. It is pro abundant life. They are for
the unborn child. Absolutely. But they're also for the birth mother,
the biological father, everybody in the equation. The book is
titled The Alternative to Abortion Why we must be pro
Abundant Life. If you go to Chris. Org we have
(26:50):
a green connect link right there. You'll see more about it.
The wound in Rawlins life, the experiences that he went
through years ago have, I believe, uniquely given him this
opportunity to step into this cultural moment. Find out more
about the alternative to abortion at Chris Fabriclive. Org click
(27:11):
that green net link today. Chris Fabry Live, where you'll
also find out more about Doctor Jeremy Treat who's joining
us today. You pray for him as he's well? Pray
for him because he's got four daughters and one's getting
ready to take her driver's test. So that's that's enough
to pray about right there. But he's going to be
speaking to Moody students again tomorrow. Uh, so pray about that,
(27:35):
this subversive fulfillment. I want you to describe that. Take
us to acts chapter 17.
S2 (27:40):
Yeah. So the phrase subversive fulfillment was coined by my
friend Dan Strange. But the idea is really present in
acts 17. And what you have there is Paul goes
into Athens. It's this pagan city. And by pagan I
mean they believe in a bunch of different gods. And
so he walks through Athens. It's the cultural capital of
the world. There's theaters and gymnasiums and temples everywhere. And
(28:04):
Paul is is reasoning in the marketplace, in the synagogue.
And the people hear about his teachings and they invite
him to come to the Areopagus, which the Areopagus is
this open forum place where people would come and give talks,
and then judges would weigh their speeches. And so Paul
goes before and here's the question. How does he approach
them in this and the way a lot of people
(28:25):
think about how do you approach the world that doesn't
recognize the kingship of Christ? They they have a combative approach,
so that they think that it has to be an
us versus them approach where it's, you're wrong, I'm right.
And for you to become a Christian, you have to
lose an argument. But Paul does something different, and I
call it subversive fulfillment, where essentially you affirm the longings.
(28:46):
You challenge the method of how people are trying to
fulfill those longings, and then you redirect them to Jesus
as the true fulfillment. So that's what Paul does. I mean,
he starts off at the Areopagus and he says, Men
of Athens. I perceive that in every way. You are
very religious. So he's affirming their religious longings. But then
he goes through and says, but the gods that you
(29:06):
worship are idols. They're they're man made, like they need you.
So how can you worship them as God? So he
challenges the method, and then he gets to the resurrection
of Jesus Christ and points to Jesus as the fulfillment
for their longings. And so that's how I think that
we should approach our society today. Rather than just coming in.
(29:27):
You're wrong. I'm right. You need to convert. It's saying, okay,
you have religious longings. You were made to worship, and
your longings for freedom and for joy and for satisfaction
and peace. Those are good longings. But you're trying to
fulfill them by running to false gods, to idols that
can't keep their promises, and then point people to Jesus
as the true fulfillment.
S1 (29:49):
Okay, so take us to the response then, because, you know,
you'd think that if the power of God is here
and you know everything in the book of acts, a
lot of great things happen. But talk about the response,
what happened? What was the outcome?
S2 (30:06):
Yeah. So it's interesting what you see at the end
of acts, as it says that some people mocked him.
Some people still had questions. So they were interested, but
they needed to hear more. And then some people Uh,
believed and they became followers of Jesus. In fact, even
Dionysius the Areopagite became a believer. So somebody who's named
after the place. So that's significant. But I think it's
(30:28):
important to recognize that we shouldn't have an ends justifies
the means approach when it comes to how we share
the gospel or how we engage our society today. I mean,
Jesus was the best preacher of all time, and they
crucified him, right? Let alone not everyone agreed with what
he said. So I think God calls us to be
faithful in proclaiming the gospel in in as winsome and
(30:51):
as persuasive of ways as we possibly can, but ultimately
to be able to trust God with the results of
that of we can't change people's hearts, but we can
point them to the one who can.
S1 (31:02):
I wonder what happened in Paul's heart with that response.
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, son
began to ridicule. Others said, we'd like to hear from
you again. Um, and then you talked about Damaris as
well as Dionysius. I wonder if he felt like he
was a success or not.
S2 (31:21):
Yeah, I mean, that's a tricky thing because I as
a preacher, I'm often tempted to equate success with results.
And I think that's the wrong approach. I think success
as a preacher is faithfulness. And my in my faithfully
preaching the word, am I proclaiming the good news of
(31:43):
Jesus Christ and calling people to trust him? If I'm
doing that, then I can sleep well and I can.
I can just leave the results up to God in that.
I mean, Jeremiah faithfully preached the word and nobody listened
to him for 20 years, right? And so I think
we need to be careful with that, because sometimes people
will be unfaithful and God will still save people through it. Right?
(32:07):
So we have to be careful of I want to
strive for faithfulness in my preaching. And usually fruitfulness comes
from faithfulness, but not always.
S1 (32:16):
Well, I'm thinking about the person who's listening who in
a work context. And you've been praying for a person
for years and years and years. Or maybe it's in
your family and get back to the praying parent thing.
You know, your son or daughter raised them in the
church and now they've gone out the door. You talked
about that as well. The millions of people in different
(32:36):
age groups who say, it's not this, this is not
for me anymore. And that continual struggle on the inside
to believe that I can say something, or I can
do something that will switch the flip, flip the switch
for that person that I care about. And and we can't,
you know, that is something that only God can do.
(32:58):
But but we're called to be a part of the process, right?
S2 (33:02):
Yeah, 100%. And I think you see that tension throughout
the New Testament of work out your salvation with fear
and trembling. Right. That like, it's okay, it's God saves.
And yet I'm called to strive from that place of
being saved. And when I preach the gospel, I'm preaching
believing that people are saved through the word proclaimed, right?
(33:24):
And they encounter Christ in that. But I can't manufacture it.
I can't make that happen myself.
S1 (33:30):
Right? There's a catch phrase, and I don't know if
if you went through, you had to hire somebody to
come tell you this or if it just kind of
bubbled up. But it's Jesus changes everything. Mhm. Um, and
we like to say around here at Moody Radio the
gospel changes everything. And it does but this, this idea
(33:50):
of Jesus changing everything. If you keep him the main thing,
then something good is going to happen with the people
that you come in contact with, right?
S2 (34:00):
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that phrase summarizes the essence
of our DNA as a church. And we say Jesus
changes everything all the time because it starts with Jesus.
But then Jesus brings transformation and renewal in our lives.
It's about what he's done for us and then it
impacts every aspect of our life. He doesn't just want
to change your soul. He wants to impact your your
(34:24):
relationships and your emotions and your finances and your sexuality
and your hobbies, every aspect of your life. So, I mean,
that just boils it down to such a simple message
that Jesus changes everything.
S1 (34:34):
Yeah. I want to talk with you about that, because
in the the melting pot that is Los Angeles and
now you're in Chicago and we can talk about New
York and other big cities around the country. There are
all these signs of people looking at self, you know,
for fulfillment. But there's also these touch points of people
(34:55):
buying Bibles, you know, like, like never before or the
or the sales of them going up. I think there
is something going on. I want to hear what you
have to say about that. When we come back from
a break. This is Chris Fabry live on Moody Radio.
Go to the website. We'd love to have you go there.
You can find out more about Doctor Jeremy Treat and
some of the things that he has done and is doing.
(35:17):
Go to Chris Fabry Live.com. There's more coming up straight
ahead right here on Moody Radio.
S3 (35:34):
What a treat to have Doctor.
S1 (35:35):
Jeremy treat with us at the radio backyard fence today.
Go to the website. You can find out more. Chris Fabry,
thanks for your support at the back fence. We'd love
to hear from you this month. Uh, some great programs
coming up for you. We talk about Jesus being unhurried
tomorrow on the program. And then we're going to talk
(35:56):
about when somebody saw you. You can't you've got to
hear the conversation with the basketball player for Liberty. Who's
the ref saw him. And and the, the hard part
of that story was he didn't like what went out
on social media. He really didn't like all the attention
that he got when he went viral. You'll hear that
(36:18):
Jake will talk about it on Friday. But now, Doctor
Jeremy treat. Okay, so how do we do this? How
do we live out what you're talking about, this subversive
fulfillment and and dealing with the pagans in our society
and trying to bring Jesus to them?
S2 (36:35):
Yeah. I mean, that's such an important question, because I
do think that acts 17 helps us know how to
live today in the world that we're living in. So
I'll just give you an example. I went walking through
Hollywood one day and tried to do what Paul did
and observe my city. And I too came to a
place of saying, wow, Los Angeles, you you are very religious.
And I saw objects of worship all around me. And
(36:58):
I'll give you an example of one of them that
was really obvious in LA. And that is the object
of worship, of fame. Uh, people come to LA to
make it, to it, to be discovered, to be famous.
And that's everybody's trying for that in LA. And so
how do we approach fame as Christians? Well, a lot
of people would have a combative mindset and just say,
(37:19):
that's just pure pride and narcissism, and you just need
to stop doing that. Well, let's think about it through
the lens of acts 17 and subversive fulfillment. So I
would say let's start by affirming the longings. I think
there's actually a deep religious impulse at the core of
this that people are longing for glory. They're made for more.
They're made to be in awe and wonder of something
(37:41):
bigger than themselves. So we can acknowledge that and affirm
that longing. But then we need to be able to
press against it and challenge the method and say, yeah,
but you're just running after, uh, you're running after like
a cheap substitute for fame or for glory by going
after fame. And you can see celebrity after celebrity who
(38:02):
gets fame and then is still miserable is Jim Carrey,
who said, I wish everybody could get famous so that
they could realize it doesn't make you happy. So you
can kind of see how that's empty. And then we
want to point people to Jesus as the fulfillment, redirect
them and say, you're longing for glory can be fulfilled
in Jesus. He's the radiance of the glory of God.
(38:24):
And so you don't need to settle for a cheap
substitute of fame when you can behold the glory of
God in the face of Jesus. So that's just one
example of how we would approach something.
S1 (38:33):
We can do the same thing though, in the church.
A blood bought believer can can run after that kind
of fame and just kind of Christianize it as well.
S2 (38:43):
Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. And honestly, people who are in ministry,
there's a really strong temptation with this. And I think
the church in America has given in to that temptation
in a lot of ways. Where there's a celebrity culture,
there's a consumerism that mirrors our society today. So I
appreciate you saying that because I think acts 17 isn't
just for the world out there. It's for us as well.
(39:04):
And we need to be able to recognize how we've
run after idols instead of God, even if it's the
idol of ministry success.
S1 (39:11):
What about the person? And LA is is kind of again,
this melting pot. The person whose identity is all about
their sexual orientation. And that is, you know, you've got
to agree with me about this and my life and
this because this is who I am. And if you reject.
How do you deal with somebody who's bought into that
(39:34):
other idol?
S2 (39:36):
Yeah. So I mean, let's think about it through the
subversive fulfillment lens is rather than coming at them and
just saying you're wrong, the Bible says this and you
need to change. You can go to them and say, okay,
it's it's good that you're longing to understand who you are, right?
Like Jesus even talks about, you know, finding yourself. And
he doesn't say that that's necessarily a bad thing. He
(39:57):
just says that you do it by denying yourself, not
by obsessing over yourself. And so I'd want to start
with someone and say, that's a good longing, but. But
I would question anyone building their identity on their desires
with anything, not just sexuality, but I don't. How can
we build our identity on something that could change like that,
or that conflicts with other desires that we have? So
(40:20):
I would say, don't build your identity on anything that's fleeting.
And so the thing that we can build our identity
on is Jesus. And that gives us an unshakable foundation
for our identity, because it's an identity that's not achieved
through our works, but it's received by faith. And so
then you can trust God, who gives us an identity.
S1 (40:43):
And that, you know all the stories about the foreign
missionaries who went to places and took the caskets with them, basically,
you know, because a lot of people would die there
who didn't see much response at all, but who were faithful,
or those who were translating God's word into a different
language and and died before it was the whole process
(41:06):
was finished. All of that. God uses that. So we
dare not judge things on on the measure things on this,
what we perceive as success. Right?
S2 (41:18):
Oh, 100%. I mean, like, look, I got to preach
to hundreds of moody students this morning and it's amazing.
And I'm, I'm preaching as a way of serving the Lord.
But what people are doing in the situations that you described, man,
that's just as important, if not more important for the kingdom.
And it's not just that of people doing that in
a majority world country or something like that. I think
(41:38):
about small town pastors who are faithfully preaching the word
and shepherding people, and they're not getting attention. They're not
getting invited onto radio shows, anything like that. Their work
is just as important as what I'm doing in a
big city like Los Angeles, or what anybody is doing anywhere.
S1 (41:54):
What do you see happening in the world? Because I
mentioned the Bible sales and all that it feels like
to me. And on college campuses and things that are
happening even in the sports world, I'm seeing this, that
there is something that's going on and I don't I
dare not just run and say revival or an awakening,
(42:15):
but at the same time, I don't want to dismiss
that either. What are you seeing?
S2 (42:19):
Yeah, I mean, I see I see a spiritual hunger
in our society today that's stronger than I've seen in
a long time. And I'm seeing that in Los Angeles
from neighbors, people in coffee shops who would have never
been open to coming to church, who are asking to
come to church, or people who would never be open
to spiritual conversations, who want to talk about Jesus. I
(42:42):
think so many people today are disillusioned with what the
world is offering, and they're looking for something sturdy to
stand on. They're looking for a hope that actually lasts,
and that's available in Christ. So I think this is
such an important time for the church to rise up
and to really boldly proclaim Jesus as the hope of
the world.
S1 (43:02):
One of the books that you wrote is about the atonement,
and we're coming up on that, that great week where
Jesus walked through and and did for us what we
could not do for ourselves, that is, offer himself for us.
Is this going to be a special week at your church?
S2 (43:18):
Oh, yeah. I mean, it always is. And I think
that I'm excited about it because what Jesus did on
the cross is the multidimensional remedy for our multidimensional problem.
And what I mean by that is, for so many people,
they only think of the cross as the forgiveness of
the forgiveness of sins. And I say, yes, praise God.
(43:39):
That's central, um, to what Jesus accomplishes. But while that's correct,
it's not complete. And we need to recognize how the
cross is the remedy to all of our problems. It's
it's through the cross that our shame is cleansed. It's
through the cross that we are adopted into a family.
It's through the cross that we experience victory over demonic
(44:00):
powers in our life. So I think the more people
can see the beauty and the glory and the power
of the cross and all that Jesus did, the more
it applies to every aspect of our lives, and we
want to proclaim that as loud as we can.
S1 (44:15):
And if there's somebody listening right now and it's I.
I've been to church before and I believe this Jesus
thing and I, you know, that's all good for you.
But I don't know if it's going to work for me.
What do you say to the person who is thinking, uh,
I don't I don't know about this Christian thing.
S2 (44:32):
I think I would want to say, I would want
to say to them, I hope that you would genuinely
seek to understand it, so that if you reject it,
you at least know what you're rejecting. I think a
lot of people reject a caricature of Christ because they
they heard a Christian say something, they saw a certain thing,
and they say, I don't want any of that. When
(44:54):
I think in reality that they they haven't really seen
the real Jesus. I mean, imagine, imagine a fourth grader
playing Beethoven on the piano and somebody listening to it
and they say, ah, I'm not really into Beethoven. It's
not really. It's just it's just not my thing. It's
not that good, you know? He's not he's really not
that great. Well, you'd say no, no, no, no. Like,
(45:14):
that wasn't the real thing. Like, that was somebody who's
trying to mimic him. And I think a lot of
people have seen the mistakes of Christians and rejected Christianity.
And I would say, look to Christ. Find out who
he really is.
S4 (45:27):
That's really good.
S1 (45:28):
That is really good. I've never heard that analogy about
the people playing, uh, fourth grade playing Beethoven.
S2 (45:33):
I got it from my friend Glen Scrivener. I don't
know if he got it from somebody else.
S1 (45:37):
Thank you. Glen, but, um, there there are a lot
of fourth graders that are playing Beethoven pretty well these days, but, um,
I can't thank you enough, Jeremy, for spending the time
with us today. Just tell us a little bit about
your ministry, the way you look at life, what you
shared with the students, what are you going to share
tomorrow with them.
S2 (45:56):
Yeah. Tomorrow we're going to be talking about Jesus's holistic mission,
how he came and proclaimed the gospel and cared for
people's needs. Word and deed. Gospel and justice. And we
get to participate in his holistic mission.
S1 (46:12):
Love it. God bless you, friend. And folks. Pray for
Jeremy and his message that it will really be powerful
in the hearts of and the lives of the students,
and come back and see us next time. Bring your
kids and your wife with us. Would you do.
S2 (46:24):
It? Yeah. That's right. Thanks, Chris.
S3 (46:25):
Okay.
S1 (46:26):
God bless you. Jeremy, treat. Doctor. Jeremy, treat our guest
today at the radio backyard fence. Find out more about him.
Click through today's information right there at Chris Fabry Live.
Do you feel hurried and rushed? Got to hear the
program tomorrow right here on Chris Fabry live production of
Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.
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