Latest / Reformed Thinking / When People Become the Bottleneck: Manpower and Mobilization in the Long War

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When People Become the Bottleneck: Manpower and Mobilization in the Long War · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to the show. You're listening to Reformed
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  Thinking. I'm your host, and as always,
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  I'm joined by my friend and resident expert on all things
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  heavy and theological. It is good to have you here.
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  It is good to be here. I'm ready to get into it.
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  We have quite the spread on the desk today.
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  Usually we try to keep our sources somewhat related, you
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  know, to theology books or maybe a history book and a biography.
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  But today? Today's a bit different.
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  Today feels like a mistake. It does look a bit disjointed at
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  first glance. Disjointed is putting it mildly.
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  On my left I have this dense, very dry secular military
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  analysis. It's titled When People Become
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  the Bottleneck, Manpower and Mobilization in the Long War.
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  It looks like something that fell out of a briefcase at the
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  Pentagon. It is just full of charts and
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  graphs and words like throughput and attrition.
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  And on the right, on the right, we have a theological exposition
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  of Second Timothy. You know the Apostle Paul's
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  final letter and the title of this one is Manpower and
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  mobilization, the Hardest Variable in a long war?
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  OK, so the titles are similar. The titles are similar, but
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  we're smashing together a modern military manual and a letter
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  written by a guy sitting on death row in 1st century Rome.
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  What is the game plan here? Are we trying to, I don't know,
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  militarize the church? Or are we trying to convert the
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  army? Neither.
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  Hopefully. I think we are doing what we
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  always try to do here. We are looking at reality
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  through the lens of Reformed theology, right?
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  We hold to the Westminster Confession, which means we
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  believe God is sovereign over everything.
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  Not just the church service on Sunday, but over history, over
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  nations, and yes, over the grim mathematics of war.
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  OK, but help me bridge the gap. What does a chart about troop
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  rotation have to do with discipleship?
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  It all comes down to the nature of the conflict.
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  Both of these sources, even though they come from total
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  different worlds, are they're arguing the same basic thesis.
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  And what's that? They are both saying that we
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  are, for the most part, confused about how wars are actually won.
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  How so? Well, ask the average person on
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  the street, or even the average Christian what wins a war.
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  I mean, what would you say? I don't know, bigger guns, more
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  money, better technology. If I have a drone and you have a
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  stick, I mean, I'm pretty sure I win.
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  And that is the common assumption.
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  We think it's a hardware problem or maybe just a numbers game.
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  You know, if I have a million soldiers and you have 10I win.
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  Seems like simple math. But these sources argue that is
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  only true in a short war. If you want to win a Sprint,
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  sure, bring the biggest gun. But both sources agree on this
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  point. We are not in a Sprint, we are
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  in a long war. A long war, yes.
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  And in a long war, the variables change completely.
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  It is no longer about who has the best tech, it is about who
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  can endure. The thesis here is that the
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  hardest variable isn't the enemy's strength, it is the
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  spiritual and human endurance of your own side.
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  The human element. The human element.
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  You can manufacture bullets, you can build tanks, but you cannot
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  manufacture A seasoned faithful leader overnight.
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  OK, that is the hook. The idea that people,
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  specifically the quality and endurance of people, are the
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  bottleneck. I want to drive this
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  conversation using the military metaphors because I think they
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  make the abstract spiritual concepts really, really
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  concrete. We're going to talk about stock
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  and flow, lag time and cannibalization.
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  And I'll do my best to anchor us in the text of chapter Timothy,
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  because Paul is dealing with the exact same problem.
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  He is facing a manpower crisis. He knows he is about to die and
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  he is looking at the church and realizing we might not make it
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  if we don't fix the way we are mobilizing people.
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  So let's start there with the problem, the grim calculus, as
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  the secular report calls it. They define a long war very
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  specifically. It is not just a war that takes
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  a long time. No, it's a certain kind of war.
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  Right, it is a struggle where replacement and rotation matter
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  more than sheer firepower. Right.
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  Think about the difference between, say, a boxing match and
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  a siege. A boxing match is violent for
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  sure, but it is short. You rely on adrenaline, training
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  and a burst of power. A siege.
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  A siege takes years. It takes years and adrenaline
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  runs out in about 20 minutes. What keeps you going in year 4
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  of a siege? Food, water, not getting sick,
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  logistics. Logistics.
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  And in the church we are in a siege.
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  We call it the interredvental period, the time between
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  Christ's first coming and His second coming.
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  It has been 2000 years. That is a very long war.
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  And we try to run it like a Sprint.
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  We do. We try to run the church like it
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  is a Sprint, relying on hype, big events, emotional highs.
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  And then we wonder why everyone has burned out.
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  Which brings us to the first big concept from the military source
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  stock versus flow. Now, when I first read this, I
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  thought of, you know, the stock market, but that's not it.
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  No. Think of a bathtub.
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  OK, a bathtub. I can picture that.
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  The water sitting in the tub is your stock.
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  In military terms, that is your pool of trained deployable
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  personnel and the keyword there is trained.
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  Right, because the source makes a big, big distinction between
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  headcount and stock. It's a.
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  Huge distinction. You can have 10,000 people in
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  uniform, that is your headcount. But if 9000 of them are raw
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  recruits who have never held a rifle, or they are sick, or
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  they're demoralized, your stock of usable combat power is
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  actually very, very low. So let's apply that to the
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  church we love to count heads. We had 500 people this Sunday.
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  We put it on the sign up. Front we do.
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  We count bodies in seats, But from a long war perspective,
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  that number is almost meaningless.
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  The real question is what is your stock?
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  OK, how many of those 500 are regenerate, mature discipline
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  believers who can handle spiritual warfare?
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  How many can withstand tragedy without their faith collapsing?
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  How many can explain the gospel to a neighbor?
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  If you have 500 people but only 5 know their Bible, your stock
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  is critically low. That is a very sobering way to
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  look at a congregation. It's not about the crowd, it's
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  about the core. And then you have flow.
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  That is the water coming in from the faucet and the water
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  draining out the bottom. Inflows and outflows In the
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  military, inflows are recruitment, retention.
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  Outflows are, well, usually casualties.
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  Casualties, yes, but the source points out that in a long war,
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  the most dangerous outflows aren't always the combat deaths,
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  they are the quiet outflows. What does that mean?
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  Burnout, moral injury, divorce, people just quitting because
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  they're tired. They just can't take it anymore.
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  The source called it leakage. The system just slowly bleeds
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  talent and experience. And this is where the connection
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  to Second Timothy is so striking.
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  I mean, you look at the context of the letter.
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  Paul is in a dungeon. He is writing his last will and
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  testament, and what is he complaining about?
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  He isn't complaining about the Roman Empire.
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  He's not focused on the external enemy.
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  Not at all. He is complaining about leakage.
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  He lists names. He does in chapter 1 verse 15 he
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  says you are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me
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  and he names for jealous and homogenies.
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  Then later he mentions Demas who left him because he loved this
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  present world. Wait, pause there for a second.
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  All who are in Asia? Is he being hydrobolic or does
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  he literally mean the entire church network he planted just
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  just ghosted him? It is likely a bit of rhetorical
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  hyperbole. I mean, he names Anna Sufras,
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  who remained faithful. But it reflects a massive,
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  massive collapse. The visible church was
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  hemorrhaging people. Just trying to imagine being
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  Paul, you are the greatest missionary in history.
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  You have done miracles. You've planted churches
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  everywhere. And at the end of your life, you
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  are looking at your stock and it is just draining out the bottom
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  of the tub. That has to be terrifying.
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  I mean, if it can happen to Paul's churches, it can happen
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  to any church it. Shatters our triumphalism,
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  doesn't it? Yeah, We took a look back at the
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  early church and think it's this constant upward line on a graph,
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  just victory after victory. But Paul is showing us the
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  reality of the long war. People leave, leaders burn out,
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  the stock depletes. And there's another layer here.
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  The scary part is in a spiritual war.
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  The logistics are, as you said, inverted.
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  We need me by inverting. Well, in a secular war you fight
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  against flesh and blood enemies. But Ephesians 6 tells us our
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  struggle is not against flesh and blood.
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  So the enemy is spiritual, but also the recruitment is totally
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  different. The state can draft people if
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  the army runs low on men. The government can force you to
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  grab a rifle. Right.
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  Conscription. It's not optional.
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  But the Church cannot conscript. We cannot force people to be
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  faithful. We cannot draft people into the
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  Kingdom of God. It is a volunteer army in the
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  truest set. Well, actually it's a called
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  army. Only the Holy Spirit can draft a
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  soldier into this war. Which makes the flow problem
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  even harder to solve. You can't just lower the
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  standards to get more bodies. You can't.
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  Well, actually, the secular source says that is exactly what
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  armies try to do. It talks about something called
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  lag and the temptation to cheat. Explain lag for us.
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  OK, so imagine a battalion gets wiped out today.
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  You have lost 500 soldiers. You need to replace them.
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  But it takes, say, six months to properly train a new soldier.
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  That is the lag, the gap. It's the gap.
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  You have a hole in your line for six months and the enemy isn't
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  going to politely wait six months for you to get ready
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  again. So the pressure is immense to
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  close that gap, to do it faster. Right.
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  And the source warns about something it calls the
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  cannibalization trap. This is what happens when you
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  get desperate. Cannibalization.
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  Yeah, you need sergeants now, not in two years.
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  So you take your best guys out of the field, the ones who are
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  actually holding the line, and you make them trainers.
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  So now your frontline is weaker. You're eating your own seed
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  corn. Exactly.
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  Or even worse, you just stop training.
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  You take a raw recruit, hand them a uniform and say good luck
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  kid, figure it out. You tried a 3D print a Sergeant?
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  Yeah, you tried a 3D print one. Turns out human beings don't 3D
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  print very well. You end up with what the report
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  calls a hollow force. It looks big on paper, but it
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  collapses the moment it gets punched.
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  And we see this in the church constantly.
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  I mean, this is the story of modern evangelicalism.
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  We feel the lag. We see the numbers dropping.
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  We see the culture turning against us.
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  We feel like we are losing influence.
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  So what do we do? We panic.
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  We panic. We try to fix the lag with
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  pragmatism. We want a quick fix.
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  We want the mixed multitude. We think if we just make the
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  service more entertaining, people will come, or if we just
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  stop talking about sin and judgement.
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  I mean, those things are bummers.
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  And talk more about therapy and life coaching.
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  We can fill the seats. We lower the recruitment
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  standards to get the numbers up. We are trying to draft the world
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  into the church, and you know what?
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  It works for a little while. You can pack a stadium that way,
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  but you haven't built stock. You have just gathered a crowd.
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  Just a head count. Just a head count and the
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  theological source is brutal on this point.
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  It's as true manpower is found only in the regenerate.
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  You cannot mobilize A spiritually dead person for a
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  spiritual war. It doesn't matter how
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  enthusiastic they are, if they aren't born again, they are a
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  casualty waiting to happen. It is like sending a mannequin
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  to the front lines. I mean, it fills out the
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  uniform, but it can't fight. And when the heat comes, when
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  persecution starts, or when the culture demands you bow to its
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  idols, the mixed multitude just evaporates.
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  That is what happened to Paul in Asia.
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  The fair weather friends were gone.
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  So we have a crisis. The stock is low, the flow is
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  leaking, the lag is real, and our natural instinct to lower
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  standards only makes it worse. That is a pretty bleak picture.
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  It is the reality of the long war.
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  If you don't face the grim calculus, you can't find the
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  real solution. OK, let's pivot to the solution
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  then. Section 2, the source of power.
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  Because if we can't generate power ourselves, where in the
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  world do we get it? Paul gives a command in Second
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  Timothy 2.1 You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that
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  is in Christ Jesus. This is the pivot point of the
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  entire letter and we have to get technical here for a minute.
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  We have to look at the Greek. Oh boy, here we go.
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  Dust off the lexicon. It is worth it, I promise.
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  The phrase be strong, the word is indunamo is a present passive
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  imperative. OK, break that down for the
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  listener who hasn't taken a Greek class in all era.
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  Imperative means it is a command.
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  It is not a suggestion. Paul isn't saying, hey Timothy,
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  if you feel like it, maybe try to be strong.
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  He is saying do this. OK, that makes sense.
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  It's an order. Present tense means continuous
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  action. Keep on doing it.
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  Don't. Just do it once and you're done.
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  Also clear. Keep at it.
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  But the passive voice, that is the curveball, that's the part
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  that messes with our heads. Yeah.
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  Wait, how do you command someone to be passive?
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  Usually a command is active. Run, jump, fight.
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  If I tell you be hit, that doesn't make any sense.
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  You can't do be hit. Exactly.
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  That is the paradox. If Paul wanted Timothy to buck
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  up and find his inner strength, he would have used the active
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  voice. He would have said strengthen
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  yourself and you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
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  Which is the American way. It's the American way.
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  It's the human way. We love the active voice.
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  We want to be the subject of the sentence.
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  I strengthen myself. I did it.
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  But Paul says be strengthen or be being strengthened.
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  Timothy is not the generator of the power, he is the recipient.
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  It's like telling a toaster be heated.
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  The toaster can't heat itself, it has to be plugged in.
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  That is a great analogy, this little grammatical nuance.
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  It just strikes a death blow to Pelagianism.
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  Pelagianism, right? That's the old heresy that says
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  we can save ourselves, or at least, you know, help God out a
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  little bit. Right.
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  It is the belief that human nature is basically good and
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  capable. But Paul is looking at the long
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  war and he knows Timothy Mimicki is timid, He is young, he has
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  stomach problems. He is probably looking at Paul's
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  chains and thinking I can't do this.
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  And Paul agrees with him. Paul says you're right, you
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  can't. This connects back to our
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  reformed view of total depravity.
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  Doesn't. It it is the foundation.
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  Total depravity doesn't mean we are as bad as we could possibly
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  be. It means we are spiritually
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  bankrupt. We have zero capital to invest
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  in our own salvation or sanctification.
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  We are born dead in trespasses, and even after we are saved, we
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  are still jars of clay. As Paul says elsewhere, we are
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  fragile. We leak.
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  So if I am the toaster and I can't generate the heat, where
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  is the outlet? The text says the power is
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  located in the grace that is in Christ Jesus that.
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  Preposition in is doing a lot of work there.
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  It denotes location. The power isn't just floating
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  around in the ether, it is located specifically in Christ.
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  This is the doctrine of union with Christ, right?
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  We are not just followers of Jesus like you follow a guy on
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  Twitter. We are united to him.
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  Like the vine and the branches? That's the classic picture, yes.
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  The life of the vine flows into the branch.
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  The branch doesn't have to strain and grunt to produce
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  grapes. It just has to abide.
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  It has to stay connected. The power for the long war is
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  the resurrection life of Jesus Christ flowing into the
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  believer. OK, but I'm going to play
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  devil's advocate here for a second.
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  This sounds great on paper. Just abide.
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  Be passive. But practically, what does that
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  look like? If I'm a soldier in a trench and
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  bullets are flying, I can't just sit there and meditate on my
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  union with Christ. I have to do something.
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  How do I obey A passive command? That is the $1,000,000 question.
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  How do you actively be passive? And the answer is you do it by
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  placing yourself in the path of the supply lines.
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  Supply lines. OK, we're back to the military
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  metaphor. If you are a soldier, you don't
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  manufacture your own rations. You don't make your own ammo,
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  but you do have to go to the supply depot to get them.
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  You have to show up. You have to show up.
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  If the truck comes and you're asleep in a ditch, you starve.
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  So what are the supply trucks in the Christian life?
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  Where is the depot? The reformers called them the
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  means of grace. God has appointed physical,
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  tangible channels where He promises to dump this power into
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  us. We are talking about the boring
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  stuff, aren't we? We're talking about the ordinary
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  stuff, this stuff that doesn't sell out stadiums, the reading
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  and preaching of the Word, prayer and the sacrament's
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  baptism and the Lord's Supper. I think a lot of people are
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  disappointed by that list. They want the supply line to be
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  a spiritual high, a vision, a miraculous encounter, and you're
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  telling them the answer is go eat a cracker and drink a little
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  cup of wine. It looks weak, it looks like a
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  cracker in a sip of juice, but by faith it is the body and
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  blood of Christ nourishing us. The theological source argues
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  that the hardest variable in the long war is what it calls the
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  discipline of dependence. The discipline of dependence.
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  It is incredibly hard for our pride to admit that we need to
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  be fed like children. We want to be the hero.
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  We want to be the energy source. But the Christian soldier wakes
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  up every morning and says I have nothing.
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  I need everything. That reframes Sunday morning
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  worship completely. It's not a performance we watch.
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  It's not entertainment. No, it's a refueling stop.
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  It's a logistical necessity. And if you skip it, you are
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  going into battle with an empty magazine.
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  And you will become a casualty. It is just a matter of time.
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  So we have the power source, Sovereign Grace.
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  Now we need a distribution strategy.
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  You can't just have power, you have to get it to the troops and
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  you have to replace the troops who are leaving.
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  Section 3 covers the strategy of mobilization.
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  And this brings us right back to that secular bottleneck,
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  leadership reproduction. The secular report was obsessed
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  with this. It kept saying that the middle
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  management of the Army, the NC OS, the sergeants are the
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  hardest piece to replace. The guys on the ground.
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  The guys on the ground, you can recruit a private in a day.
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  A general takes 30 years. But that middle layer, that is
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  the glue that holds the whole thing together.
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  And if that glue fails, the unit falls apart.
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  The source calls it brittleness. An army without good sergeants
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  is brittle. It looks hard, but hit it once
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  and it shatters into a million pieces.
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  So how does Paul build the sergeants?
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  He lays out the plan in Second Timothy 2.2 what you have heard
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  from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust faithful men
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  who will be able to teach others also.
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  There's so much packed into that one verse.
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  It is the master plan for mobilization.
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  First, just look at the math. Math.
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  Math. Count the generations.
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  First you have Paul. He's the source.
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  Second, you have Timothy, the recipient. 3rd you have the
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  faithful man that Timothy is supposed to train.
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  That's three. And 4th you have the others who
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  those faithful men will then teach.
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  That is 4 generations in one sentence.
• 18:17
  It is geometric progression. It is multiplication, not
• 18:20
  addition. But isn't that isn't that slow?
• 18:22
  I mean, if I want to win a war, don't I want to reach the
• 18:24
  masses? Why spend all my time with a
• 18:26
  handful of faithful men? Why not rent the Colosseum and
• 18:30
  preach to 10,000? That seems more efficient.
• 18:33
  That is industrial efficiency. It works for manufacturing
• 18:36
  widgets. It works for generating a crowd,
• 18:38
  but discipleship is agricultural.
• 18:41
  It is organic. You can't mass produce a mature
• 18:43
  believer. You can't put them on an
• 18:45
  assembly. Line.
• 18:46
  You can't. It requires life on life
• 18:48
  investment. If Paul had focused only on the
• 18:51
  masses, the message would have died with him.
• 18:54
  By pouring into Timothy, who poured into others, who poured
• 18:56
  into others, he started a chain reaction that is still going
• 19:00
  today. It is the difference between
• 19:01
  building a factory and planting an orchard.
• 19:04
  The factory is faster upfront, but the orchard reproduces
• 19:07
  itself. Right.
• 19:08
  And notice what is being passed down, what you've heard from me.
• 19:12
  The source called this the parrotic, the deposit.
• 19:15
  A deposit like in a bank. Exactly like in a bank, the
• 19:18
  primary job of the leader isn't to innovate.
• 19:21
  It isn't to come up with fresh new takes on God.
• 19:23
  It is to guard the deposit to keep the message pure and pass
• 19:27
  it on intact. Jude says it's the faith once
• 19:30
  for all delivered to the Saints. That's it.
• 19:32
  And notice the safeguard he includes in the presence of many
• 19:36
  witnesses. This is huge.
• 19:39
  Paul is fighting against an early form of Gnosticism.
• 19:42
  Gnostics loved secret knowledge. They would say.
• 19:46
  Here I have a secret truth about Jesus that only the enlightened
• 19:49
  ones know. Like a spiritual conspiracy
• 19:51
  theory. Precisely.
• 19:52
  And Paul says no, this wasn't done in a corner, it was done in
• 19:55
  public. There are witnesses.
• 19:57
  The gospel is an open secret. It is historical.
• 20:00
  We don't have a secret handshake.
• 20:02
  We have a public confession. Now let's talk about the
• 20:04
  personnel selection. This is where I think the modern
• 20:06
  church gets really uncomfortable.
• 20:08
  Paul gives a very specific criteria for who receives this
• 20:10
  deposit he says entrust to faithful men.
• 20:13
  Pistoi Anthropoi. Faithful, trustworthy, reliable.
• 20:17
  He doesn't say talented men, he doesn't say charismatic men, he
• 20:20
  doesn't say rich men or well connected men.
• 20:23
  No. And that is such a sharp rebuke
• 20:25
  to us. Look at how we hire pastors or
• 20:28
  pick leaders. We look for the high capability
• 20:31
  guys, the guys with the cool hair, the great speaking voice,
• 20:34
  the magnetic personality. We want the influencer we.
• 20:37
  Want the guy who can draw a crowd and grow the budget?
• 20:41
  But Paul says give me the guy who won't quit.
• 20:44
  Give me the guy who will guard the vault.
• 20:46
  The word entrust is a banking term.
• 20:49
  You don't put your life savings in a vault just because the
• 20:51
  vault is painted a cool color. You put it there because the
• 20:54
  steel is thick and the lock works.
• 20:56
  So if you entrust the deposit to a talented man who isn't
• 20:59
  faithful. He will spend the deposit.
• 21:02
  He will realize that the old doctrines are unpopular.
• 21:04
  They don't sell books, they don't grow a platform.
• 21:07
  So he will change them. You'll soften the hard edges to
• 21:09
  buy more popularity. And in doing so, he bankrupts
• 21:12
  the next generation. He might fill the room for a
• 21:15
  while, but he has lost the war. That is a chilling thought that
• 21:18
  we could be mobilizing for a personality cult, not for the
• 21:21
  truth. When that personality falls, and
• 21:23
  they so often do, the entire mobilization collapses.
• 21:27
  So the strategy is deep discipleship, multiplication
• 21:31
  over addition, and faithfulness over talent.
• 21:34
  That sounds hard. It is grueling work.
• 21:37
  It's slow. And that leads us perfectly into
• 21:39
  Section 4, the cost of endurance.
• 21:42
  Paul knows this isn't a picnic. He gives 3 metaphors in verses 3
• 21:45
  through 6, the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer.
• 21:49
  And our secular source actually maps onto these remarkably well.
• 21:53
  Let's take them one by one. First, the soldier verse 4.
• 21:55
  No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim
• 21:59
  is to please the one who had listed him.
• 22:01
  Entangled. The Greek word is implicati.
• 22:04
  The notes in the source say it is like a sheep caught in thorns
• 22:07
  or a runner with his shoelaces tied together.
• 22:09
  It implies being immobilized. You are stuck in the Roman
• 22:13
  world. This was literal.
• 22:14
  A soldier could not own a farm. He couldn't engage in trade.
• 22:18
  He had to be 100% available to the Emperor.
• 22:20
  The secular source talks about this as the economic labor trade
• 22:23
  off. In a Total War.
• 22:24
  Every man at the front is a man not working in the factory.
• 22:27
  There is this constant tension between the economy and the war.
• 22:31
  For the Christian, the tension is between the Kingdom and the
• 22:33
  world. So let's get specific here.
• 22:36
  What are the civilian pursuits that entangle us today?
• 22:39
  Are we saying Christians shouldn't have jobs or hobbies?
• 22:43
  No, of course not. Paul worked as a tent maker.
• 22:46
  It is not about having a job. It is about entanglement.
• 22:49
  It is about what captures your heart and your energy.
• 22:52
  The source gives some pretty sharp examples here.
• 22:54
  It suggests that for many modern American Christians, our
• 22:58
  civilian pursuit is politics. Oh, you're going there?
• 23:01
  We have to look at the last few years, how many Christians have
• 23:05
  been completely consumed by the culture war?
• 23:07
  The source points out that whether it's an obsession with
• 23:10
  critical race theory on the left or with Christian nationalism on
• 23:13
  the right, these are political agendas.
• 23:15
  They are civilian affairs. But aren't those things
• 23:18
  important? Shouldn't we care about justice
• 23:20
  and the nation? They are important, but they are
• 23:23
  not the war. If a soldier is so busy arguing
• 23:26
  about the color of the curtains in the barracks that he forgets
• 23:29
  to clean his rifle, he is entangled.
• 23:31
  When the church becomes just a spiritual precinct captain for a
• 23:34
  political party, any party, we have become undeployable for the
• 23:38
  gospel. We alienate half the mission
• 23:41
  field before we even open our mouths.
• 23:43
  We are fighting for a temporary Kingdom instead of the eternal
• 23:46
  1. That's it.
• 23:47
  Our aim is to please the one who enlisted us.
• 23:50
  Does Jesus care more about my stance on tax policy or my
• 23:53
  faithfulness to his gospel? We know the answer.
• 23:55
  That's the. Soldier Next is the athlete
• 23:58
  verse 5. An athlete is not crowned unless
• 24:00
  he competes according to the rules.
• 24:02
  In the ancient Olympics, the rules were brutal.
• 24:05
  If you cut a corner on the track, you weren't just
• 24:06
  penalized, you were kicked out. No crown.
• 24:09
  Game over. The secular parallel here is
• 24:11
  legitimacy. The source argues that if people
• 24:14
  think the war is rigged, if the draft is unfair, or the rich get
• 24:17
  off easy, they stop fighting. The whole system loses
• 24:21
  legitimacy. In the church, this is about
• 24:24
  lawlessness. It is the temptation to cheat,
• 24:27
  to think we can reach the finish line without following God's
• 24:30
  rules. What does that look like today?
• 24:32
  It looks like antinomianism. That means against the law.
• 24:36
  It is the idea that because we are saved by grace, holiness
• 24:39
  doesn't matter. We can live like the world,
• 24:41
  sleep with who we want, lie on our taxes, do what we want, and
• 24:45
  still get the crown. I'm under grace, so the rules
• 24:47
  don't apply to me. Paul says no.
• 24:49
  You can run the race, you can sweat, you can pump your arms.
• 24:52
  But if you run out of bounds, you get no crown.
• 24:55
  We cannot redefine sin to make the gospel more palatable.
• 24:58
  We cannot embrace the sexual ethics of the culture just to be
• 25:01
  nice. That is cheating and cheaters
• 25:04
  don't win. OK, so that's the soldier and
• 25:06
  the athlete. Finally the farmer.
• 25:08
  The hard working farmer ought to have the first share of the
• 25:11
  crops. This is the hardest metaphor for
• 25:13
  our generation. Why?
• 25:14
  Because we don't farm anymore. Because we are addicted to
• 25:16
  speed. We are the Amazon Prime
• 25:18
  generation. We want next day delivery on
• 25:20
  everything, including spiritual growth.
• 25:23
  But farming. Farming is agonizingly slow.
• 25:27
  The secular source talks about lag time.
• 25:29
  You invest in training today and you don't see the payoff for
• 25:32
  months or even years. Think about the farmer.
• 25:35
  He plows, he plants, and then nothing happens for weeks.
• 25:40
  You're just looking at dirt. No dopamine hit. 0 Dopamine.
• 25:43
  In fact, it is just anxiety. Will it rain?
• 25:45
  Will the bugs eat the seeds? The work is copianta.
• 25:49
  That's the Greek word. It means exhausting sweat
• 25:52
  drenched toil. We live in a dopamine culture.
• 25:54
  We post a tweet, we want likes instantly, we launch a ministry,
• 25:58
  we want revival by next Tuesday and.
• 25:59
  When we don't get it, we quit or we switch to a hack.
• 26:03
  We look for the spiritual shortcut.
• 26:05
  The prosperity gospel is basically a farming hack.
• 26:07
  So this seed of $100 and God will give you a harvest next
• 26:10
  week. It promises the crop without the
• 26:13
  time, without the toil. But real ministry is mundane.
• 26:16
  It is just showing up week after week.
• 26:18
  It is a long obedience in the same direction is parenting your
• 26:21
  kids for 18 years, is praying for a lost spouse for decades,
• 26:26
  and is preaching the same gospel Sunday after Sunday to the same
• 26:29
  faces. The hardest variable is simply
• 26:31
  the willingness to be bored and tired and keep plowing anyway.
• 26:34
  Because the harvest is sure. That is the promise the farmer
• 26:38
  gets the first share. God is not mocked.
• 26:40
  What you sow you will reap. It just takes time.
• 26:43
  Let's move to the final section, Section 5, Strategic failure
• 26:48
  points. We have looked at the problem,
• 26:50
  the power and the cost. Now where does it all fall
• 26:53
  apart? The secular source identifies a
• 26:55
  systems failure where all these bottlenecks start to compound on
• 26:59
  each other. This is the death spiral, and it
• 27:01
  goes like this. First, legitimacy drops.
• 27:04
  People stop believing in the cause.
• 27:06
  OK. Second, willingness drops,
• 27:07
  recruitment dries up. Third, to fix recruitment, you
• 27:11
  lower standards. You bring in the mixed
• 27:13
  multitude. The hollow force.
• 27:14
  Exactly. 4th low standards mean bad training. 5th bad training
• 27:19
  leads to high casualties and incompetence, which 6th makes
• 27:23
  the cause look even worse and legitimacy drinks even further.
• 27:26
  And the cycle just repeats until the army collapses from the
• 27:29
  inside out. So how do we stop the death
• 27:31
  spiral in the church? The theological source breaks it
• 27:33
  down into head, heart and hands. Let's start with the head, the
• 27:36
  indicative, the truth we need to believe.
• 27:39
  We have to get our thinking right first, Paul tells Timothy
• 27:42
  in verse 8. Remember Jesus Christ risen from
• 27:46
  the dead, the offspring of David.
• 27:47
  Why that specific reminder? There are a lot of things to
• 27:50
  remember about Jesus. Because it anchors us in
• 27:52
  victory. Risen from the dead means the
• 27:55
  ultimate weapon of the enemy. Death is broken, it has no
• 27:59
  sting, and offspring of David means he is the rightful king.
• 28:04
  The war is effectively already won.
• 28:06
  So we are not fighting for victory, we are fighting from
• 28:09
  victory. Exactly.
• 28:10
  If we think the outcome of history depends on our frantic
• 28:13
  energy, we will panic, we will burn out, we will try to save
• 28:17
  the world with activism. But if we know the king is
• 28:19
  already on the throne, we can be calm, we can be steady.
• 28:23
  We can just do our part. OK, that's the head.
• 28:25
  Next is the heart, the affections.
• 28:28
  This addresses the willingness bottleneck.
• 28:30
  Why does a soldier endure a freezing trench?
• 28:32
  It's not for money. It's not for political policy.
• 28:35
  He endures because he loves his buddies or he loves his home and
• 28:37
  family. Or he loves his captain.
• 28:39
  Augustine said that we are defined by what we love.
• 28:42
  If you love the praise of men, you will be a terrible soldier
• 28:45
  for Christ. The moment the culture sneers at
• 28:48
  you, you will retreat. To endure the long war.
• 28:51
  You have to love the well done of Jesus more than the likes of
• 28:54
  the world. You have to reorder your loves.
• 28:56
  And finally, the hands, the action steps.
• 29:00
  The source gets really practical here first for pastors.
• 29:04
  Stop doing everything. You are the bottleneck.
• 29:07
  If the pastor is the only one visiting the sick, the only one
• 29:10
  teaching, the only one counseling, he's failing.
• 29:12
  He is not entrusting. He is hoarding ministry.
• 29:15
  He needs to become a multiplier and equip the Saints for the
• 29:18
  work. For fathers, This one stung me a
• 29:20
  bit when I read. It disentangle the family
• 29:22
  schedule. We complain that our kids are
• 29:24
  leaving the face, but look at our calendars.
• 29:26
  We prioritize travel, sports, academic tutors, music lessons.
• 29:30
  All good things, but they are civilian pursuits.
• 29:33
  We skip church for tournaments. We skip family worship for
• 29:36
  homework. We are training them for the
• 29:38
  wrong war. We are telling them with our
• 29:40
  actions, the crown of the soccer trophy is more valuable than the
• 29:44
  crown of righteousness. And then we are shocked when
• 29:47
  they grow up and don't care about the Kingdom.
• 29:49
  We have to reclaim the training ground of the home.
• 29:52
  And for the workplace believer, the person just going to their
• 29:55
  job Monday to Friday. Compete according to the rules
• 29:58
  in your office, in your factory, in your classroom.
• 30:01
  Do not lie in your reports, do not cheat your customers, and do
• 30:05
  not bow to the cultural mandates that contradicts scripture.
• 30:08
  Even if it cost you a promotion, even if HR calls you in, you are
• 30:11
  a soldier behind enemy lines. Act like it.
• 30:14
  This has been heavy. We have gone from the grim
• 30:18
  calculus of attrition to the high calling of the soldier.
• 30:21
  But I want to end on a note of hope.
• 30:23
  The secular source ends on a pretty depressing note.
• 30:26
  It says that in a long war, exhaustion inevitably leads to
• 30:29
  strategic contraction. Meaning eventually you just run
• 30:32
  out of gas, you run out of money, you run out of men, you
• 30:35
  have to shrink, you have to give up territory.
• 30:37
  That is the fate of every human empire.
• 30:39
  Rome fell. The British Empire fell.
• 30:42
  Entropy always wins in the human sphere.
• 30:44
  With the church. The church is the exception
• 30:47
  because our supply line is not human.
• 30:50
  Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
• 30:54
  Is Jesus tired? No.
• 30:55
  Is the resurrection life running low on battery?
• 30:57
  No, it is inexhaustible. Then we don't have to contract.
• 31:02
  We can expand. The gates of hell shall not
• 31:05
  prevail against us. The secular war ends in
• 31:07
  exhaustion. The spiritual war ends in
• 31:10
  coronation. That is the difference.
• 31:12
  If I am feeling titled today, and I know many of our listeners
• 31:15
  are, it is not because the tank is empty, it is because I am
• 31:19
  disconnected from the hose. Right.
• 31:21
  And I want to speak for a moment too, that listener who might be
• 31:23
  hearing all this and realizing I don't have a supply line.
• 31:25
  Maybe you are not a Christian. Maybe you just stumbled onto
• 31:27
  this show. The Unbeliever.
• 31:29
  Listen to the military logic we've laid out.
• 31:32
  If you are not in Christ, you are on the battlefield.
• 31:34
  There is no neutral ground, but you are fighting for the losing
• 31:38
  side. You are fighting against the
• 31:40
  King of Kings, and you have no manpower, no amount of money, no
• 31:43
  amount of good deeds, no amount of success that can withstand
• 31:47
  His judgement. You are fighting a war you
• 31:49
  cannot possibly win. And the call today is simple.
• 31:52
  Surrender. Lay down the arms of your
• 31:55
  autonomy. Defect to the winning side.
• 31:58
  The captain is merciful. He takes rebels and turns them
• 32:00
  into sons, which you have to surrender.
• 32:03
  And for the believer listening, the weary St.
• 32:06
  Keep plowing. The mud is deep.
• 32:09
  The rain hasn't come yet, but the harvest is coming.
• 32:13
  If we endure, we will also reign with Him.
• 32:15
  That is the promise. We are not marching toward
• 32:18
  defeat. We are on a pilgrimage toward a
• 32:20
  coronation that. Puts the Monday morning grind
• 32:22
  into perspective. It is all part of the campaign
• 32:25
  Every. Prayer, every act of obedience,
• 32:27
  every moment of quiet faithfulness when no one is
• 32:29
  watching. It all counts.
• 32:31
  Well my friend, thank you for walking us through this.
• 32:33
  It was a dense one, but I think we unpacked.
• 32:35
  It it is always a privilege. Let's be on the supply lines.
• 32:37
  Amen. And to our listeners, thank you
• 32:39
  for joining us on this deep dive.
• 32:41
  Until next time, keep thinking.