“If they don’t want to hear, do we still tell them?”

Steve Brown:
If they don’t want to hear, do we still tell them? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus and the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life’s hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us. But there’s a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So, here’s seminary professor and author Steve Brown and Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth to answer your questions.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. Good to see you. Good, good.

Steve Brown:
I’m doing good too. I am doing better than I should. You know, that’s a statement that people use often. And I was trying to think of a guy from whom I heard it first. DeMoss. DeMoss used to say, and he was the first one I ever heard say it, He said, when you ask him how he was doing, he said, better than I deserve.

Pete Alwinson:
Better than I deserve. That’s right. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And now, everybody says that a lot.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I know. I know.

Steve Brown:
Well, I’m glad. Because it’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s a good phrase.

Steve Brown:
It’s true of all of us. That’s Pete Alwinson. Check out ForgeTruth.com and when Pete’s new book comes out, and he’s working on it now, I’ll let you know. And, it’ll be a life changing book, just like the first one, Like Father Like Son. If you haven’t read that, be sure and read it. By the way, and you know, Pete comes in, and we answer questions on Fridays. And we love your questions, and we take those, and you, seriously. You can send a question to 1-800-KEY-LIFE by recording it and calling up, following instructions 24 7. That’s 1-800-KEY-LIFE or

Key Life Network
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or you can e-mail us at [email protected] and if you can help us financially, we’ve never turned a gift down ever. We are a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. Those are organizations that oversee our financial practices to make sure we’re honest and we were honest before they came along and still are, and we’ll use your gift for the glory of God. Be as generous as you can, if you can, and if you can’t, we understand. Do stop for a moment and say a prayer for this ministry. And Pete. Let’s stop for a moment, and you say a prayer, and we’ll answer these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
That’d be a great idea. Let’s pray together. Well, Father, we do come to you now at the end of this week, and stop for just a minute. For Lord, we need you, and we honor you and praise you. We thank you that you gave us the opportunity in the past to worship you. And this week-end we have that same opportunity. Lord, we look forward to gathering with your people and to lifting up your name and also to hearing your word preached so we can apply it to our lives. Lord, we honor you and yet we do need you every day as well. You know our needs, you know the bills that have to be paid, you know the challenges that we face, the questions we have, Lord, the things we can’t figure out, we need you in every way to continue to be our Lord and Master. And now, Lord, with these questions, we ask that you would give wisdom as we answer them. And Lord, we pray that you would give us growth, as we move ahead into a week-end and then the week ahead. We commit these things to you in your strong and holy name, Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. All right, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I don’t understand why you say we should talk to people because we’re hated when we love Christ and I’m surrounded where people just completely say right to your face, they hate God, they don’t believe in him. And I can’t, I can’t.

Steve Brown:
You know, I get that. I really do. And he doesn’t know it, but he’s, by not saying anything. He’s kind of being obedient to what Jesus said to do about shaking the dust off your feet and walking away.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
We had a, I have a friend, and I haven’t talked to him in years. Roe Brooks, he was one of the early staff members of Campus Crusade for Christ. And that, in those days, they didn’t have any four spiritual laws, they didn’t have anything. They just sent a few guys on college campuses around the country and Roe was sent to New England in the Boston area. And he’s a big old guy with a grin as big as you can believe. And when he would come on campus, they got to know him. People scattered, I mean, they hid behind trees, they ran back into the building, they tried to avoid him. One time he caught one of these young men and he put his hand on his shoulder. And he said, Roe, I don’t want to hear it. I just don’t want to hear it. He said, okay, let’s pray. And so, with his hand on his shoulder, the kid couldn’t move because Roe was big. Roe said, Lord, I have a young man here who never wants to hear your name mentioned again. And I ask in the name, and he felt the student tapping him on the shoulder. He said, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, Roe, I wouldn’t go that far. Sometimes it’s an evangelistic technique to say to somebody, I will never bring that up again unless you ask me to. But if you’re ever in trouble and you need some good advice, I’ve got the truth.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And leave it at that, you know, there are people that don’t want to hear, and there are people that do want to hear.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s true. That’s true. And we believe that because the Scriptures are clear about that. Read John 6. So, go ahead and be bold and try to talk, but like you said, there is a time to not cast pearls before the swine, but to don’t burn a bridge unless you absolutely have to, right?

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s right. I think I’ve burned too many bridges, because I’ve said often, All right, I ain’t going to talk to you about it anymore, I’m going to go talk to somebody else. But I, and I think I’ve been offensive, and I repent, because what you just said convicted me, and I think that was the Holy Spirit.

Pete Alwinson:
But, you know, I think one of the things is we often are so thin skinned. We take everything personally.

Steve Brown:
We really do.

Pete Alwinson:
If they don’t want to talk about God, don’t take that personally. I mean, cause Jesus said, if they hated me, they’ll hate you.

Steve Brown:
Make Jesus take it personally.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, right.

Steve Brown:
Cause that’s legitimate.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s the real deal.

Steve Brown:
And don’t give up. I mean, we are so quick to get silent. That doesn’t mean you have to be offensive about it or beat anybody over the head with a Bible. But I think just when somebody says, I don’t want to hear about it, I’ve been hurt. We need to say at that point, I get that. If you ever want to talk though, I’d be glad to talk, but I just want to be your friend. That kind of statement opens a door for the future that might be there.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely. I think that’s a great approach and it’s really a gospel approach.

Steve Brown:
You know, one time I was in the Evangelism Explosion thing at Coral Ridge and was being trained. And we went out with this lady who was a dear older saint. And visited people who had visited the church. And there were three young people in an apartment. They were living, it was three’s a company, two girls and a guy. And they had visited the church, so we visited them. And the purpose was to share our faith. And the first thing one of those young men said was, I don’t believe that stuff anymore, I used to. And I turned to him and said, what’s wrong? And what is it you don’t believe? Well, to make a long story short, I ate his lunch is what I did. He was obvious and when I turned away to the others, he went whsssh like that.

Pete Alwinson:
Like glad that your gaze was taken off.

Steve Brown:
And then when we walked out, I said to these, there was another pastor and this lady. And I said, well, I don’t think he’ll say that again. She said, no, Steve, he won’t. But he won’t ever come to Christ either. And all of a sudden, man, my ego got shot down and I realized I’d done a really, really bad thing.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, I appreciate that. We’ve all done that too, especially as young men, cause we want to win arguments. We are good news tellers. We are not heart transformers.

Steve Brown:
That’s so good.

Pete Alwinson:
I can’t change anybody, but I can tell the message and I can try to answer questions.

Steve Brown:
And we’re not responsible for the message.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
We’re responsible for speaking it. If nobody in the world believes it, except us, we still have to speak it because he told us to.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. Okay. I repent.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re absolved.

Steve Brown:
I’m going to do better from now on. I just want you to know. This is an e-mail. Why does the Christian church accept the reality of the fact that everyone has died in Adam, yet does not believe that everyone shall be alive in Christ?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, that’s a great question.

Steve Brown:
It really is.

Pete Alwinson:
Because that is the juxtaposition that Paul makes in that text. But clearly, you only become alive in Christ if you put your faith in Christ and that is presupposed in that text. That’s how I would answer it. How about you?

Steve Brown:
Well, exactly the way you did. And I think that is the basic Biblical way to answer it. I would add an addendum. I would say we’re not exactly sure what happened at the death of Christ. But it’s a lot bigger than we think it is. Something really changed radically about the world that has universal implications. I’m not a universalist. And this person who asked the question is or is asking a question about universalism, will everybody be saved? No, they won’t. Those will be saved who have faith in Christ. But with that being said, I just think it’s, I think there are going to be people in heaven that are going to surprise us.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
People that seem to not receive Christ, who seem to do. And so, I think there are going to be a lot more people there than we thought. And a lot of people not there, maybe.

Pete Alwinson:
That we did think, you know.

Steve Brown:
And mostly we’ll be surprised that we’re there. No, I won’t be. You know, people say that joking. I’ll be surprised that I’m there. I won’t be a bit surprised.

Pete Alwinson:
No, no. You know, we’ve gone so far down this road following Jesus, we know He’s real, we know the gospel is real. I’ll see you there.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And, you know, my friend John DeBrine, he was a New England radio pastor and the best Bible teacher I’ve ever known, when he was on. And the second best Bible teacher that I’ve known when he was off. But one of the things that I remember, and he’s in heaven now, that he said often is, you can be as sure of heaven right now, as you would be if you were already there. And I heard him say that over and over again. And he’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s good.

Steve Brown:
You really can.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. That’s very powerful.

Steve Brown:
Well, we don’t have time for another question, but we do have time. You want to sing?

Pete Alwinson:
Not, not on your life, not on your life.

Steve Brown:
Listen, okay, we used up the time and we can go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.