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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:43
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:45
Let's get into it.
0:46
All right guys, this podcast today, I want to talk about a 2012 sermon that was delivered
0:51
by one of our favorite pastors while under some pretty awkward circumstances to say the
0:56
least.
0:57
And this was a sermon that was delivered by Matt Chandler, okay?
1:00
So you guys have heard me talk about Matt Chandler a lot on this podcast.
1:03
If you go back, I even did an entire podcast episode, episode number 14 about his latest
1:08
book.
1:09
But if you don't know who Matt Chandler is, let me go and bring you up to speed aside
1:12
from the fact that we just absolutely love him here at Undaunted Life.
1:16
Like we just love everything that he's done, everything that he stands for and the things
1:19
that he said.
1:20
He's personally my favorite pastor.
1:22
I have a lot of guys that I really respect, a lot of guys that I've read their books
1:25
and I've listened to their sermons and I've taken a lot of notes, but Matt Chandler is
1:28
the guy above every other guy.
1:30
I just love everything that he does and everything he stands for.
1:33
So he is the lead pastor of the village church, which is in the Dallas area.
1:37
So when Chandler was 28 years old, he became the church's pastor.
1:40
So this was in 2002 and he's been there ever since.
1:44
So when he got there, the church was under a different name.
1:47
It's a Baptist church and there were about 160 people coming every week, right?
1:52
And he took it over and now today, there are more than 10,000 weekly attenders of this
1:59
church.
2:00
And so the village is currently a multi-site church in the Dallas area, so they're kind
2:03
of spread out throughout the Metroplex, but they are currently in the process of working
2:09
all of their campuses towards becoming autonomous churches.
2:12
So basically the reason was that I think last year he announced this or maybe the year
2:16
before that, but I think it was by 2020 was the, what the year that they were going for.
2:21
So by 2020, they wanted every one of their churches to be serving the communities that
2:25
they're in because they have, they have some and just spread out in all different areas.
2:31
And so you can look at it as, oh, well, they're all in Texas and they're all kind of in the
2:35
same area, but all of those communities are fairly unique.
2:38
And so the church and the eldership kind of came together and unanimously decided that
2:42
they were going to work in that direction.
2:44
And so I thought that was incredibly cool and we've, we've seen some other churches that
2:48
are multi-site actually kind of decide that they were going to do that as well.
2:52
So it's kind of an incendiary thing that they decided to do.
2:55
He's also the current president of the acts 29 network.
2:58
So if you're not familiar with acts 29, that is a network of church planting churches.
3:02
Okay.
3:03
So in this, these are churches that are on every continent except Antarctica, right?
3:07
So these are people that are planning churches and doing things that are all over the place.
3:13
And so if you go to the acts 29 website, you can actually look up your area, like plug
3:18
in your zip code and do those different things.
3:20
And you'll be able to actually see the acts 29 churches that are in your area.
3:24
So they all kind of, you know, ascribed to a certain way of doing things.
3:28
And so it's not like a one size fits all like, you know, it's not like a, I'm just trying
3:33
to think of the best way to describe it.
3:35
It's not something where it's like, okay, everyone has to preach a certain way and they
3:38
have certain music or anything like that.
3:40
It's not anything like that, but it just kind of puts all the churches in the same mind frame
3:43
in terms of how they're going to do church.
3:46
He wrote the book, the explicit gospel.
3:48
That is one of my favorite books, the explicit gospel.
3:51
It's on our book list, the 100 books every modern Christian man should read.
3:54
It's easily a top five book for me.
3:57
And it's just, he's an incredible guy that's led an incredible life, but he's not been
4:01
without, you know, his, his pain and his trials either.
4:04
So if you know anything about Matt Chandler, you know that, and thanks on the Thanksgiving
4:08
day in 2009, he suffered a seizure at his home.
4:12
The same day he's obviously rushed to the hospital and they did an MRI.
4:15
And the MRI showed that he had a tumor in the frontal lobe of his brain.
4:19
So he had cancer, right?
4:20
So he went under, or he, he underwent 18 months of radiation and chemotherapy.
4:27
And you know, he got to the end of the 18 months and he had beaten cancer.
4:30
And since then he, I think he does a scan once per year and the scans have all been
4:34
clean up to this point.
4:36
But one thing that you'll know, if you've followed him for any length of time, this
4:40
is a guy that he preaches like he's playing with house money, right?
4:47
Because you know, he had bad cancer.
4:48
The dude should probably be dead.
4:50
Like they were praying for this guy like he was going to die, but he's not dead.
4:54
He's still here.
4:55
He's still crushing it almost a decade later.
4:58
But the thing is, is he kind of is playing with house money.
5:00
And I think he knows it because he's always kind of been a very powerful and very boisterous
5:05
presenter and preacher, but it's just kind of been amplified since he went through the
5:08
cancer thing.
5:10
So I find it amazing that the sermon that I'm, we're going to be talking about today,
5:15
that I had never heard it until this last week.
5:18
There was a buddy that shared it on Facebook and I just saw that he shared a video with
5:22
Matt Chandler in it.
5:23
So I was like, Oh man, I love Matt Chandler.
5:24
He's like my spirit animal or whatever.
5:26
But then I actually went and watched it.
5:29
And I was blown away, just completely floored by this.
5:35
It's been considered by many folks to be one of the best sermons ever delivered.
5:38
So if you, if you look kind of in the reformed communities, this is kind of one of the anchor
5:43
things that they point to and not just for the sermon content, but because of the circumstances
5:48
with which it was presented and I can absolutely see why.
5:50
So let me go and give you guys kind of the setup because the sermon itself is great, but
5:55
the setup really kind of accentuates some of the things that were going on.
5:58
So there's a guy online, actually his name is Tim Challeys, I think is how you say his
6:02
last name, C-H-A-L-L-I-E-S, Challeys, we'll say Challeys, okay.
6:08
So on his website, he actually did a really, really great job of kind of setting up and
6:12
summing up this sermon.
6:13
So he had like a 11 or 12 minute YouTube video and the link to that video is in the description.
6:19
So some of this summary is going to be coming directly from him.
6:21
So I want to make sure I give him credit for that.
6:24
So basically this sermon went down in January of 2012 and in terms of where it went down,
6:29
this was at Elevation Church's Code Orange Revival.
6:33
So this was kind of like a 12 night event to begin the year and it was going to be with
6:38
a lot of different speakers and a lot of music and worship and different things.
6:41
And so if you're familiar with Elevation Church, you know that it was started by Stephen Furtick.
6:46
So this was started by Stephen Furtick in 2006 when Furtick was just 25 years old.
6:50
They started in North Carolina and the church launched with about 100 people in attendance.
6:56
But today, I think in the last annual report, it showed that they are averaging well over
7:00
25,000 weekly attenders now.
7:03
So from 100 to over 25,000, so explosive, explosive growth.
7:08
But there's kind of a rub here, right?
7:11
So of course, Matt Chandler was brought in, but there's an entire backstory that made
7:15
it even crazy that he was even invited.
7:17
So the rub here a little bit is that from a philosophy standpoint, like church philosophy,
7:23
Stephen Furtick and Matt Chandler are really on opposite ends of the spectrum.
7:27
So you have a guy like Furtick who is like a growth and grace guy.
7:30
So about the growth of the church and the growth of the ministry and it's very, very
7:34
grace focused.
7:35
So very similar to maybe, you know, an Andy Stanley or Rick Warren or Bill Hybels, Craig
7:40
Rochelle, Brian Houston, et cetera, et cetera, whereas Matt Chandler is more of a reformed
7:45
theology guy, right?
7:47
So Allah, John Piper, John MacArthur, J.I.
7:50
Packer, those types of folks.
7:52
But then also Furtick and Chandler are very different when it comes to their sermon content.
7:57
So Furtick is, you know, basically what God can do through us.
8:02
So that's, that's kind of an overarching theme to a lot of his sermons is what God can do
8:06
through us.
8:07
Whereas Matt Chandler is very much more of a what God did for us.
8:12
So what God can do through us versus what God did for us, right?
8:17
So but I mean, there's plenty of big time pastors out there that their paths never crossed.
8:22
So it's no big deal, but their differing styles kind of came to a head at an event called
8:28
the elephant room in 2011.
8:30
So basically the elephant room is where they bring pastors in and they put them on, they
8:35
pair them up to discuss controversial topics, right?
8:38
And these are things that are, you know, societal or things inside the church versus things
8:42
outside the church.
8:43
And so they normally try to get pastors that are on different sides of issues so that they
8:48
can kind of come in and discuss different things.
8:50
So Chandler and Furtick were given the topic of the purpose of the church.
8:55
So basically, why is the church here?
8:57
And so Chandler in, in this discussion, he kind of busted Furtick for saying that evangelism
9:03
and doctrine are exclusive.
9:06
I'm even just saying that now seems a little bit crazy that evangelism and doctrine are
9:09
exclusive.
9:10
But Chandler made this because, or he said this because it was in reference to a sermon
9:15
that Stephen Furtick delivered in 2008 where he was quoted as saying this.
9:18
So here's the quote, and over 500 people have given their lives to Jesus for the first time
9:22
in this church in the last five months, that's over a hundred people per month.
9:27
If that doesn't get you excited and you need the doctrines of grace as defined by John Calvin
9:31
to excite you, you're in the wrong church.
9:34
So Tim Chalees summed this up very well, he said, quote, this reveals a key difference
9:39
between Furtick and Chandler, Furtick deliberately downplayed deep doctrine for the sake of growing
9:44
his church.
9:46
Chandler, though, was absolutely convinced that deep doctrine was essential for bringing
9:50
true and healthy growth to his church, end quote.
9:54
So with all that kind of being said and with that kind of awkward, contentious meeting
9:59
that they had at the elephant room, fairly amazingly, Stephen Furtick invited Matt Chandler
10:04
to come and speak at Elevation, Elevation Church's Code of Orange Revival that very
10:10
next year.
10:11
So the elephant room happened in 2011 and in January of 2012, he was on the docket of speakers.
10:16
And so the headliners were guys like TD Jakes and Craig Rochelle and Christine Kane and Perry
10:21
Noble.
10:22
And so Chandler's style and philosophy are obviously very different than the other speakers.
10:28
So I'm sure some of you have heard some of those other speakers.
10:31
You're familiar with their style, but it's very, very different than Matt Chandler.
10:36
And so essentially every night, there were hundreds of people that waited in line to
10:41
see these speakers.
10:42
And so, and I mean, apparently it was like really bad weather during this time.
10:46
So these people that got inside, there were thousands of people inside, actually, and
10:49
then there was also thousands more watching via live stream.
10:52
So this was this was a pretty big deal.
10:55
But one thing I want to make sure that you guys do is I'm about to break down the sermon
10:59
and kind of the things that I got from it and the things that were really important.
11:03
But I want you to go watch this sermon, like right now.
11:08
And if you're driving, do not watch the sermon.
11:10
That's dangerous.
11:11
But I provided the link in the description for this podcast to the actual sermon.
11:16
So it's about 54 55 minutes along.
11:19
And I want you to watch it before you hear what I have to say about it, okay?
11:24
Because I'm going to summarize it in a way that, you know, fits kind of what I'm doing
11:27
and what I have a feeling towards, but I don't want that to sully you listening to it for
11:31
the first time.
11:32
So I'd prefer for you to listen to it and then come in and you can kind of get my summary
11:37
and see if it kind of goes with some of the things that you pull from it, okay?
11:40
So right now, pause this podcast, go open up that YouTube link.
11:45
If you're driving, do not watch the video, set your phone face down or something like
11:48
that.
11:49
But I just want you to hear what Matt Chandler has to say.
11:51
So go ahead and do that now.
11:54
Okay.
11:55
So if you're back, if you're unpause, hopefully you got a chance to watch that all the way
12:00
through and we're able to pay attention.
12:02
So I want to kind of go through some of the big things that I got from this and some of
12:07
the things that I noticed.
12:08
So obviously this was titled God is for God.
12:11
And that is an incredible title because it really does in four words encapsulate the entire
12:17
reason why Matt Chandler was there.
12:19
So it started out with a pretty slobbering intro from Ferdick.
12:22
So the first time I watched it, I actually skipped the first five minutes that Ferdick
12:25
was doing his intro just because I just want to hear what Matt Chandler had to say.
12:29
But I went back and watched that and, you know, Ferdick was just, he talked about the
12:32
elephant room and, you know, he talked about how he wanted to bring different people with
12:37
different points of view in and all those different things.
12:40
And it was just kind of buttering everybody up and you're almost thinking to yourself,
12:43
uh, man, this is, this is going well, like maybe, maybe this is something where he's actually
12:48
wanting to embrace these different, different viewpoints and things like that.
12:51
But as you can see, as we talk about a little bit later, it wasn't necessarily the case.
12:55
So one thing that was kind of weird from the beginning is that Steven and Ferdick brought
12:58
up what he called auxiliary a minters.
13:02
And so the stage was like chock full with people sitting on like these, these couches
13:06
and these little, the chairs, like to the left and to the right of the speaker.
13:11
And so it was kind of weird and very different because normally you just see one speaker
13:14
up there.
13:15
And if there's like a panel discussion, you'll see multiple people.
13:18
So that was, that was kind of weird.
13:20
But it was kind of a strange lead up.
13:22
There was tons of emotion and there was like this big applause and Steven Ferdick made
13:26
sure everybody did this big standing ovation for him when he came up.
13:30
But Chandler pretty much shut that stuff down like with the quickness.
13:34
So after about two or three seconds of the standing ovation and after Chandler realizes,
13:38
all right, my mic's on.
13:39
It's ready to go.
13:40
He's literally screened.
13:41
Sit down.
13:42
Sit down.
13:43
Like it was just like, that's, you know, stop it.
13:44
Like I get that y'all are, you know, clapping because your pastor just told you to, but sit
13:47
down.
13:48
Let's get after it.
13:49
One of the incredible things is Chandler just really gets right at the heart of what
13:54
he's there for from the very beginning.
13:56
He doesn't really wade in or kind of slowly make his way in.
14:00
He said he really wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on in the room.
14:05
And he was very, very adamant.
14:07
This again is in the first couple of minutes that he's speaking.
14:09
He wanted to go beyond code orange revival, okay?
14:13
He wanted to get beyond elevation church.
14:15
He wanted to go beyond Stephen Furtick to what is got up to, but considering the contentious
14:21
pass that these two pastors had had and kind of the, the awkward interactions, it was,
14:27
it was a pretty intense way to start because he was like, man, I love code orange and elevation
14:32
and Stephen Furtick, but that's not why we're all here and we've got to be realistic about
14:36
why we're all here.
14:38
So that was a pretty, pretty powerful way for him to start.
14:41
And so he immediately went on basically how happiness and joy are not equal.
14:47
That was kind of one of the first main points that he made in this sermon.
14:50
And he talked about how easily happiness disappears and how if you treat it as anything other
14:56
than something that's flippant, it could, you could run into issues.
15:00
And so one of his quotes there was, if you live long enough, you'll bleed.
15:03
And that's just basically his way of accentuating that, you know, even if you haven't felt pain
15:07
up to this point in life, it is coming, like it is coming for us all.
15:11
And even I think all of you will remember from, I think it was our very first Q&A podcast.
15:16
There was a question about basically the advice I would give to a young college student that
15:19
was, you know, going to college for the, for the first time.
15:22
And I talked about how the two worst pieces of advice that you could give a young person
15:26
or someone that's entering the workforce is number one, follow your heart.
15:29
And number two, do what makes you happy.
15:32
And the reason why I talked about with, you know, the do what makes you happy thing is
15:35
because happiness is on this single continuum.
15:38
And it's so flippant and so easily lost, right?
15:41
So you reach in your pocket and you find a hundred bucks that you didn't know is there,
15:45
you know, you're happy or, you know, you and your wife have been trying to get pregnant
15:48
for a while.
15:49
And then she announces to you that she's pregnant, happy, right?
15:51
That's all in the same continuum.
15:53
And those things can so easily be taken away, right?
15:56
And they're just not equal to joy.
15:59
And Chandler really gave fair warning about where he was going to be going within the
16:05
speech, right, around what he was going to be talking about in terms of joy and happiness.
16:09
So I pulled a quote out here.
16:10
So here's a quote, all it takes is one thing and your happiness is gone.
16:14
So look at me.
16:15
I'm not interested in boosting, encouraging or helping your happiness because I believe
16:20
it's cheap.
16:21
And I believe that it will not sustain you for the journey that God has you on.
16:24
So what I am for and what I am after is your joy and sometimes getting to joy stings.
16:31
And so if some of the, this stings tonight, know that ultimately I come as an ambassador
16:36
of Christ for your joy.
16:39
So this was kind of one of those things at the very beginning where people were really
16:42
sure, am I supposed to be clapping right now?
16:44
Like he kind of just said something that was contrary to every other speaker we've seen
16:48
and the things that we've seen preached from the same pulpit by our main pastor, but you
16:52
know, it just kind of kept going from there.
16:54
So the big point that he made is it's really an overarching point for his entire sermon
16:58
that he delivered is that God's motivation in everything is himself.
17:02
Again, the title of this thing is God is for God, right?
17:06
And he starts out with talking about Psalm 23 one through three because when you read
17:12
these, these verses, you're like, man, God is for me.
17:16
God must be like my biggest fan.
17:17
God must be like all over me, just loving on me right now.
17:20
And so Psalm 23 one through three, it starts like this.
17:23
So the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
17:26
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
17:28
He leads me beside still waters.
17:30
He restores my soul.
17:32
He leads me in pass of righteousness.
17:35
But then this is where he draws the line.
17:37
This is where he draws the line because the very last part of verse three is that he leads
17:42
me in pass of righteousness.
17:44
And here it is for his name's sake.
17:48
And so he also after he talks about Psalm 23, he goes into several dozen other Old Testament
17:53
New Testament scriptures saying pretty much the same thing that God is for God.
17:57
The last one that he talked about was Revelation 21 and it was verse 23, and the city has no
18:02
need of sun or moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and it's lamp
18:08
is the lamb.
18:09
So basically Jesus at some point, whenever everything is set back to new, he's going
18:14
to be more important than that burning ball that we pretty much are centered on at this
18:18
point, right?
18:19
So God is not for us like we've been taught, like we've been shown for the majority of
18:25
our lives in a lot of different ways that God is here for us, like that that he is that
18:31
basically the entire universe is centered on us.
18:34
Cultures telling us that we're intrinsically valuable and tells us that we deserve so much.
18:39
And we really are taught that the center of the universe is our place.
18:43
But the reality is guys, and this is the big thing that he talks about is that God is
18:46
for God.
18:48
God is about his glory.
18:50
And there was something really big while he was talking during this section that I don't
18:55
know if most people picked up on it, but it was it was awkward for me and I was watching
18:59
it, you know, like seven years after it happened or six years after it happened.
19:02
But Chandler, after he got through talking about how the universe is not about us or
19:06
that that God is not a, you know, for us in the same way that we think that the way society
19:10
is told us it is.
19:11
He said, unfortunately, it doesn't get preached very much either.
19:16
And so here he is standing on the pulpit of a church that has kind of had that style where,
19:24
you know, God is for us.
19:26
You know, we are the center of the universe.
19:28
That's something that you see a lot in Steven Furtick's sermon.
19:31
So it is very interesting that he made sure to drive that point home twice with Steven
19:34
Furtick sitting, you know, not 15 feet away from him.
19:37
So one of the next sections he talks about is basically that the, the Bible isn't about
19:43
us either.
19:48
So I thought this was pretty interesting.
19:49
I've heard people say something, you know, similar to this and similar different types
19:52
of context, but you know, the Bible has been said by a lot of people that it's, it's the
19:57
road map for life, right?
19:58
So you'll hear a preacher say that or you hear someone say that the Bible is a roadmap
20:02
for us.
20:03
This is how we should live.
20:04
And so this was Matt Chandler's quote in reference to that.
20:07
Ultimately, it's not the road map to life.
20:10
If you think that way, you'll read the Bible wrong.
20:13
What you'll do is you'll keep infusing yourself into the stories of the Bible, like you're
20:17
the hero.
20:18
This happens all the time.
20:20
I want to be straight.
20:21
I love you enough to be straight.
20:23
You're not David.
20:26
Your trouble in life is not Goliath.
20:29
And if that's true, you're in a lot of trouble, bro, because you miss.
20:34
You fling your stones and you miss and Goliath is still there.
20:38
And now what?
20:39
Well, I had five.
20:40
You'll miss all five.
20:43
So if you view the scriptures through the lens that all the superheroes of the Bible
20:47
are actually you, then you've put a weight on your shoulders that listen to me.
20:52
You will not be able to bear.
20:53
Again, I'll say the last line again.
20:55
You've put a weight on your shoulders that listen to me.
20:58
You will not be able to bear.
21:00
So this was an incredibly big point because I can say growing up in a family where the
21:04
Bible was around, but it was never opened.
21:06
Like the Bible was never really read in my home and I kind of found faith on my own as
21:11
a teenager that the Bible was just kind of this thing that I became saved, whatever that
21:17
meant at the church that I was going to at the time.
21:19
I go out and get a teen Bible with all this crazy colors and stuff on the cover and all
21:24
this really cool graphics on the inside.
21:27
And that was just the Bible.
21:28
So it's like, okay, I need to read this thing because apparently God lives in there and
21:30
I need to find it.
21:32
And so I can see how most people think of it as a road map to life.
21:35
But if you think the Bible is a road map to life, it does kind of give way to that same
21:39
feeling and those same ideas that this is all about us somehow, that this entire thing,
21:45
all these ancient manuscripts that have been put together for so conveniently into this
21:49
book is all about us, right?
21:52
And so there are a lot of points made in this entire sermon that he delivered, but I'm going
21:57
to talk about one point and so this is like, if you had to sum it up, this is the point
22:02
about his sermon.
22:03
So he even sums it up himself, so I'll go ahead and read his quote here.
22:06
So if I could take this whole message and kind of just boil it down and condense it into
22:10
its purest form, here's simply what we're celebrating here that despite me, despite
22:16
my continued failures, despite my shortcomings and foolish heart, God, because of the imputed
22:22
righteousness of Jesus Christ to me and his wrath absorbing death on the cross and his
22:27
resurrection, now sees me as perfect and spotless and holy and not because I am, but because
22:34
he is God so owns the glory that everything is his.
22:40
That's why no one should walk with a swagger in the kingdom and no one should walk with
22:46
a limp.
22:47
I love that quote.
22:48
That's why no one should walk with a swagger in the kingdom and no one should walk with
22:53
a limp.
22:54
So he even went further with his summary and he kind of talked about basically the two
22:59
reasons why it's good news that God is for God, right?
23:04
Because he talked a lot about how this, just the content that he was speaking on, especially
23:08
at this revival at a church like Elevation Church, this was jostling a lot of people,
23:13
right?
23:14
He mentioned that several times that it's kind of shaking them foundationally, like, I don't
23:19
really know how I feel about this, like what exactly is he saying?
23:22
What does that mean?
23:23
I have to change in those types of things.
23:24
So basically he wanted to kind of provide some solace by giving the two reasons why it's
23:27
good.
23:28
So the first reason was is since God is for God, he's not after our be grudging submission,
23:34
right?
23:35
He's ferociously about our joy, ferociously about our joy.
23:40
So he made a comment that heaven isn't a place for people that are scared of hell.
23:43
It's for people that love God, like that's what heaven is, right?
23:47
And this is where he kind of made very interesting points about the law about how this is how
23:52
the law comes into play, because the reason that the law is there is because God designed
23:56
life.
23:57
So if you're a designer, but then you don't provide someone a pathway to do whatever it
24:01
is, the thing that you designed, that's, that's a little bit weird.
24:04
It doesn't make sense to do it that way.
24:06
He designed life and he knows how to do it best.
24:08
So that's why the law was given to us to be like, this is how you do life best.
24:12
This is how it built you to do these different things.
24:15
So again, yes, since God is for God, he's not after our begrudging submission.
24:18
He's ferociously about our joy.
24:20
And the second thing is since God is for God, you are not the sinner of the universe.
24:26
He drove that home, right?
24:27
And so you kind of had half the crowd at that point, half of them were clapping, the other
24:30
half was still like, I don't know what I'm going to do.
24:32
But the biggest issues in our lives are because we are all about us.
24:36
He makes that declaration immediately that when you are the sinner of the universe, everything
24:41
is trying to revolve around you, at least in your brain and maybe in your psyche and you
24:45
know, how you operate in modern society, maybe that's your philosophy, right?
24:49
But like the more that's true, the more angry and tired you'll be and the less that's true,
24:53
the more free you'll be.
24:55
That's one of the big things, big things that he said.
24:57
And so this messaging should have been very, very, I guess it should have really shaken
25:04
the foundation of some of these people, right?
25:07
And so, but that's on an individual level because this is a revival.
25:10
So you have members of Elevation Church there, you have members of the community, you have
25:13
people that are coming to church for the first time, you have people that are running the
25:16
whole gamut.
25:17
So that was kind of the initial point, right?
25:19
But then I want to talk about, you know, I guess what I'll call the point part two, but
25:23
this isn't like the point in terms of, hey, this is the point of what I'm saying.
25:27
This was a point as in he was pointing fingers at Elevation Church and churches like it.
25:32
It was very clear what Matt Chandler was doing towards the end of the sermon and he didn't
25:36
exactly hide it.
25:37
He talked about how if you fall in love with a preacher or with a preaching style or a worship
25:44
leader or a worship style, that that can kind of weave into the ethos of your church and
25:50
of your attitude towards ministry and that that could actually be opposed to the things
25:54
of God and how dangerous that could be.
25:57
And he made the quote that Israel never did good with blessing, but they always did well
26:01
with a whack to the head, right?
26:03
So at this point, the entire sermon, you know, he kind of mentioned Stephen Furdick and he
26:08
mentions the tension there and says, we got to get underneath all this and he's saying
26:13
these things.
26:14
And again, the crowds, you know, they're trying to cheer and other times, other times
26:17
it's like, huh, you know, they didn't know if they could even laugh.
26:19
But what's really strange is pretty much right after he makes the quote that Israel never
26:24
did good with blessing, but they did well with a whack to the head.
26:28
He kind of got the shut up music.
26:30
So I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but if you've ever like watched like
26:33
the Grammys or Academy Awards and someone's like really getting into their speech and they
26:37
really, you know, really got to go to commercial or something like that, you'll hear the music
26:41
kind of come up in the background and just kind of rises slowly and that's kind of their
26:45
signal to be like, all right, your speech is done, wrap it up, you know, we got to go.
26:49
So he gets music coming in the background.
26:51
Now I know you may have not noticed it that way and I can certainly be wrong, but it's
26:56
kind of, you know, towards the end of sermons at certain points, there's kind of like a
27:00
signal.
27:01
And that's whenever, you know, the, the organist or the piano player or the guitarist, they
27:04
start playing.
27:05
But Matt Chandler, the reason why I think that this was like shut up music, like holy crap,
27:09
I need to get this guy out of here is Matt Chandler proceeded to talk for the next 10
27:13
minutes.
27:14
Right?
27:15
I mean, that is either the longest like runway to get towards, you know, the prayer at the
27:20
end or they were trying to wrap him up a little earlier than he wanted to, but you know,
27:25
nonetheless, he just kind of kept going.
27:27
So that kind of wraps up basically a summary of the sermon, but there was some fallout after
27:32
the sermon as well.
27:33
And again, the, the guy talked about the beginning on his website, he kind of goes through some
27:37
of this and I pulled some of it myself, but when you're watching this, you could kind
27:42
of sense the tension in the room.
27:44
I mean, I certainly could, because I followed both of these men's ministries somewhat closely.
27:49
The crowd didn't always know what to do.
27:51
They didn't know if it was okay to clap.
27:52
They didn't know if it was okay to laugh.
27:54
Sometimes they just went with it.
27:56
But another really interesting thing is that Stephen Furtick wouldn't clap.
27:59
I mean, literally Stephen Furtick is sitting to Matt Chandler's left, not 10, 15 feet away.
28:04
And so whenever they would do a wide shot, you would see all these people clapping and
28:08
you never saw Stephen Furtick clapping.
28:10
So that was at least interesting, right?
28:12
I'm not going to impune motive on him, but that was at least interesting.
28:16
And then at the end, you know, as Matt Chandler is doing his, doing his prayer, you know,
28:23
they're getting the drums and the music set up in the background and you can kind of see
28:26
that.
28:27
And Stephen Furtick is kind of walking back and forth behind Matt Chandler and he's, he
28:31
looks like he's in a days like he was just kind of like, why in the world did I invite
28:36
this guy to my church like, and again, I could be reading into it a little bit too far.
28:40
I'll reserve the right to be wrong here, but that that's kind of what it seemed like.
28:44
And but here's the interesting thing about what kind of happened.
28:47
So normally what happened again, this is a 12 night event that they did at the beginning
28:51
of the year after each night's presentations during the code orange revival, elevation
28:56
church would rebroadcast the sermons for those that missed them live, because again, this
29:01
was live streamed and it was presented live.
29:04
And so they did that after every night's presentations, except for the night after Chandler's presentation.
29:12
His sermon was conveniently not rebroadcast it, right?
29:15
Again, this was going in the face of what they had literally done programming wise for
29:19
days and days leading up to this one.
29:21
And then all of a sudden this one wasn't put up.
29:24
So elevation kind of got called out for that.
29:26
And so furtick tweeted like this half hearted apology and then they finally uploaded the
29:30
sermon for others to view, okay?
29:32
So, you know, crisis averted, you know, they may have tried to sweep that one under the
29:36
rug.
29:37
Maybe it was an oversight.
29:38
Who knows?
29:39
But we kind of got a hint as to which it was because three months after the event, right?
29:43
Elevation church, they put together a highlight video from the code orange revival and in
29:48
that highlight video, they had all the speakers, they had, you know, the the people that were
29:52
doing the music, but there was only one speaker that was left out of the highlight video.
29:57
I'll give you three guesses who it was, but I think you only need one.
30:00
It was Matt Chandler.
30:01
He was the only speaker that spoke during those 12 days.
30:05
That was not included in the highlight video, okay?
30:08
So you at the very least have to question the wisdom of that move, considering that they
30:14
were already put on blast for not rebroadcasting the sermon after it was delivered.
30:19
But you're almost bringing more attention to yourselves by not including Chandler again,
30:24
right?
30:25
You try to hide it the first time you got called out and then you were pretty much forced
30:28
to put it up there based on, you know, public outrage.
30:31
But then it almost seemed petty on the back end that, you know, here it is that you bring
30:36
this guy in.
30:37
He didn't preach on a message the way that you wanted it to.
30:40
And you just kind of leave him off.
30:41
So, um, the thing was is this was after and again, like I told you, I went back and watched
30:46
the intro that Stephen Furtick gave, this is after that slobbering intro that Furtick
30:52
gave for Chandler where he spent several minutes talking about how he wanted all kinds of different
30:57
styles to be spoken at the revival, not just one style of preacher, but that kind of rings
31:02
hollow when you basically try to make it as if the guy never presented.
31:06
So that's a lot of different content.
31:08
And again, if if you stopped early on to watch the entire thing, which I certainly encourage
31:12
you to do, um, it's kind of, you know, you, you've heard of what I had to say about
31:16
it.
31:17
Maybe you heard, you know, what other people have had to say about it.
31:19
You have your own thoughts, but I have three thoughts that I want to kind of put forth
31:22
that are going to kind of wrap up all this.
31:25
So basically what do we make of all this that happened with the sermon and all the different
31:30
things that happened around it?
31:32
So the first thing is that Chandler could have gone up there and fished for applause
31:37
like all the other speakers, but he brought fire instead.
31:41
That's what he did.
31:42
Right.
31:43
This is a fire that could make everyone and everyone's ministries better, right?
31:49
To focus on the fact that God has forgotten that we are not the center of the universe.
31:53
And so one thing that I found interesting and this kind of is close to home for me is that
31:57
he had Craig Rochelle come up there and speak.
32:00
So as you know, I'm in the Oklahoma City area and my wife and I attended Craig Rochelle's
32:04
church, life church for over 10 years.
32:07
So went there for a very, very long time.
32:10
And when you're at a place for any length of time, you can kind of see trends, right?
32:14
You can kind of look back in time and kind of start to connect the dots.
32:18
And one thing I noticed is that over the years of me going to life church, there was a definitive
32:22
change in Craig Rochelle's style, right?
32:25
His style of preaching, he would even say at different points like, if no one would start
32:32
clapping and be like, that's good preaching right there.
32:34
And then everybody would start clapping like, Oh, that's our cue that we need to start
32:36
clapping.
32:37
And so that just always kind of struck me as strange.
32:40
But then around that same time where, you know, Craig was kind of trying to go for the applause,
32:46
those types of things get everybody like fired up.
32:48
He was spending a lot of time actually with Stephen Furtick and he was going to his church.
32:52
And so, you know, Stephen's Furtick's church would be so fired up and so crazy and, you
32:56
know, like, you know, screaming and hollering and having a good time.
32:59
And then he would come back to our church in, you know, Edmond, Oklahoma, and it wasn't
33:03
the same type of excitement, right?
33:05
And so he was trying to almost infuse that.
33:07
And then Craig, Craig's style, and again, I'm not, I'm not hating on the guy.
33:10
Life church is probably the greatest evangelical church on the planet.
33:14
So, so don't misunderstand me.
33:15
And I know there's a lot of people out listening to this podcast at a Tim life church.
33:18
So certainly don't don't take this as I'm, you know, going after a life church or Kregro
33:22
Shell.
33:23
But it seemed that Kregro Shell's style over the years has been centered more on, Hey,
33:29
what is a quote that I can say that people will remember?
33:33
And then I'll build a sermon around it, right?
33:35
So I need, I need pretty much this entire sermon to be encapsulated on an Instagram quotable
33:40
type of thing.
33:41
And then I'll just kind of go around there.
33:43
So the thing is is when, when pastors start to focus on, you know, looking for applause,
33:49
it has a tendency, it's not all the time, but it has a tendency to kind of water down the
33:54
message that they're trying to spew, right, whatever, whatever that message is, and whatever
33:58
the context, it could be in business, it could be in coaching, it could be in leadership,
34:02
it could be in the church or whatever.
34:04
And so the thing that's interesting here is that you had a lot of pastors that were speaking
34:11
at this event that they were going up there, trying to get laughs and trying to get applause,
34:14
right?
34:15
And then you have a guy like Chandler come in and basically he's like, I'm going to put
34:18
all my chips in the center and I'm just going to bring it.
34:21
And so I certainly appreciated that.
34:23
And again, just to reiterate, so I don't get any angry emails, I'm not hating on these
34:27
other churches and their other ministries, right?
34:29
I'm not trying to pretend as if there's one way to go after people, right?
34:32
And one way to bring them to the kingdom.
34:34
And there's a lot of great things that those other people have done, it's just a little
34:37
bit different, right?
34:38
So again, kind of a second point of kind of what to make of all this is that Chandler
34:43
during the sermon, he kind of puts, you know, cheerleader preachers on notice, right?
34:47
So I kind of call, you know, these types of guys cheerleader preachers.
34:51
So you got your Steven Furtick's, your Kregow shells, think Judith Smith, Carl Lynch, and
34:55
I guess, you know, the varsity like the president of the cheerleader preachers is Joel Osteen,
34:59
right?
35:00
Sure, people who do focus a lot on what God can do through you and the Joel Osteen is,
35:06
you know, it's almost, it was almost unfair for me to mention those other four guys with
35:09
Joel Osteen because Joel Osteen is so far on the prosperity gospel side of things.
35:13
It's ridiculous.
35:14
So I probably shouldn't have said all those together.
35:16
There's a definite difference between the first four I mentioned and the Joel Osteen.
35:20
But the message here that I think Matt Chandler was saying, even from a macro point of view,
35:25
is just be careful.
35:27
Just just be careful if you're running a ministry.
35:29
You may grow, but in what direction are you growing?
35:32
Okay.
35:33
So even further than that, you may be attractive, but what are you attracting people to, right?
35:41
Like you might be a mile wide, but you're probably only an inch deep, right?
35:47
So that's the thing that I think it's important for these people that are in these ministries
35:52
to think about is how much depth are they bringing, right?
35:56
How are they discipling folks?
35:57
So I think that's an important thing that we get out of here.
35:59
And the last thing is we should put ourselves on notice, right?
36:03
So Chandler put, you know, these cheerleader preachers on notice, but we should put ourselves
36:06
on notice and think about what we're doing within the church, the churches that we serve,
36:11
right?
36:12
You know, the local churches that we are supposed to be serving the body of Christ, right?
36:17
How are we operating in these different areas?
36:19
Are we, are we feeding and being fed, right?
36:23
Are we doing things that are allowing us to do things for the glory of God, because it's
36:29
his name that we're after, right?
36:31
And I'm, guys, I'm not hovering above this situation myself.
36:34
I've done a lot of things selfishly, you know, trying to find churches that meet my knees
36:38
and worship services that are more my style.
36:41
I've done all those different things, right?
36:43
And I'd be the first one to tell you that those were not good things for me to do.
36:47
But this puts ourselves on notice, like we've got to be able to be thinking of to ourselves
36:51
and of ourselves.
36:52
What are we focusing on?
36:53
Are we considering ourselves to be the center of the universe here?
36:57
Is the Bible about us?
36:59
Have we looked at all these people in the Bible and it's like, oh, man, I really think
37:03
I'm like Peter, or gosh, you know, my story is really close to Paul's and, you know, David's
37:07
a man after God's own heart, gosh, darn, I'm a man after God's own heart, like I think
37:10
we should be able to do this thing.
37:12
So again, I think Chandler did a lot of things in this message.
37:15
I think a lot of the things that he did were intentional and there were a lot of ancillary
37:19
things that kind of came that probably weren't super intentional.
37:22
But again, as I kind of sit back and reflect on this entire sermon, I think it's incredibly
37:27
important to realize that we will have messages that come and go in our lives and a lot of
37:31
things that we'll won't remember in any context.
37:35
Maybe we go to a TED talk or we go to like this, you know, big sermon series or something
37:40
like that.
37:41
And there's this thing that don't resonate with us.
37:42
But I really do believe that this sermon that was delivered back in 2012 is one of those
37:47
sermons that we can constantly go back to and look at and use that as an anchor point,
37:52
depending upon where we're at in our lives.
37:54
If we ever feel like it's about us, that the whole point is us, I think we can go back
37:59
to this message and reground ourselves.
38:01
Okay.
38:02
So guys, we'll assume the quick resilience boost before I let you go.
38:04
As you know, by now, we are a men's ministry in our mission is cultivating mainly resilience.
38:08
And specifically, we do that by providing content that forges spiritual, mental and physical
38:13
toughness.
38:14
So today we're going to hit all three spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
38:16
So obviously on the spiritual and the mental side, I want you guys to go and watch this
38:21
sermon.
38:22
Okay.
38:23
I mentioned it earlier.
38:24
I gave you enough time to pause it and go and watch it.
38:26
So watch that.
38:28
Watch the, um, the kind of the recap that was by that other guy's website.
38:32
So watch that as well.
38:33
Both of those links are here.
38:34
But then the other thing I'm going to do for physical is I've talked a lot about this on
38:38
Instagram, but the, the Murf workout is coming up here in a couple of days on Memorial Day.
38:42
So if you don't know what that is, Google it, the Murf workout.
38:45
So if you go to our Instagram, so if you just go to Instagram and it's at undaunted life,
38:49
every Tuesday I post a workout of the week, so the last several weeks, the workouts have
38:53
kind of been more centered on, you know, pull up, push up, squat stuff, stuff that's going
38:58
to be very, very integral to being able to do the Murf.
39:00
So that would be the little boost I want to do for you guys.
39:03
I've had a lot of guys reached out to me and say they really like those workouts because
39:06
I try to do most of them in a way to where it's like, you know, you don't need anything.
39:10
You can do them in a hotel room.
39:12
You can do them in your backyard.
39:13
You don't need a bunch of weights all the time, like at the very most you can do a bar.
39:16
But at one point, I didn't have access to a pull up bar.
39:18
I literally found a tree that had a horizontal limb that was really strong.
39:22
I did pull ups on that thing.
39:23
So there's things that you can do for that.
39:25
So make sure that you check all that stuff out.
39:26
Okay.
39:27
As always guys, thank you so much for listening this far in and getting to the end of the
39:31
podcast.
39:32
If you like this, please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud or Google Play and refer your
39:35
friends to listen and share this on social media.
39:38
If you tag us in the post, we will make sure that we like it.
39:40
If we deserve a five star review, please leave one.
39:43
And as I've reminded you before, I am currently booking speaking engagements for 2018.
39:47
You can hit me up at info at Undaunted Life.
39:50
I'll come speak to your men's group, your Sunday school, your conference, your team,
39:54
whatever you have me to do.
39:55
I'll come in there and do it for you guys.
39:56
Okay.
39:57
Website is www.undaunted.life.
39:59
You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undauntedlife or facebook.com/undauntedlife.
40:05
You can also check out our free devotionals on the U version Bible app.
40:08
Search Undaunted Life under plans.
40:11
And we also want to thank the band, August Burns Red, for allowing us to use their music
40:14
library for our content.
40:16
The intro out our track on this podcast is their song King of Sorrow, which is off their
40:19
latest record entitled Phantom Anthem.
40:21
And they just released a music video for that last week, so you can find that on YouTube.
40:26
Links to all this are in the description.
40:28
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
40:30
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical
40:36
toughness, keep seeking the Lion of Judah.