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The Banned Book That Every Pastor Needs to Read with Jeffrey Perry · Ministry Minded

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ministry Minded Podcast.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Pastor Brad Gray.
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  SPEAKER_00: I serve as the senior pastor right here at Stonington Baptist Church.
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  SPEAKER_00: And on today's episode,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm delighted to have a friend and brother in ministry and a mutual friend from
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  SPEAKER_00: the Reclamation I'm just delighted to have him on the show talking about this book
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  SPEAKER_00: that you may or may not have heard of.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.
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  SPEAKER_00: So Jeffrey and I talk about that.
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  SPEAKER_00: We talk about how the marrow of modern divinity continues.
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  SPEAKER_00: Can play into pastoral theology and pastoral ministry and why even a book
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  SPEAKER_00: that was somewhat banned in certain Christian circles so long ago is still
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  SPEAKER_00: so resonant and relevant for pastors and ministries and churches today.
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  SPEAKER_00: And why we should go and read it, why you should go and read it.
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  SPEAKER_00: So we talk about that and many other things relating to preaching,
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  SPEAKER_00: relating to gospel clarity,
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  SPEAKER_00: relating to ensuring that Christ is the center of all of our sermons,
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  SPEAKER_00: all of our ministries, everything that we're doing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for the sake of his kingdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: So sit back and relax.
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  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy this conversation with Jeffrey.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was so good to hang with him for a little while and talk about all
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  SPEAKER_00: of these things and many other things.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I know you'll be blessed by this too.
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  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, stick around.
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  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy this conversation.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you on the other side.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jeffrey Perry, thanks for joining the show.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming on Ministry Minded.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's been something I've been wanting to do for a while.
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  SPEAKER_00: You and I have so many mutual connections and mutual interests and all that kind of stuff.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I'm so excited that you're here today.
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  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing, Jeffrey?
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  SPEAKER_00: Doing good.
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  SPEAKER_00: Doing good.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me on.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man,
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  SPEAKER_00: I've just been ever since we got connected via the Reclamation Project,
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  SPEAKER_00: which shout out to them.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've just been really enthralled by some of the projects that you've got going on.
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  SPEAKER_00: So for some of the folks that may not know who you are or kind of some of the things
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  SPEAKER_00: that you do either on Substack or other places,
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  SPEAKER_00: kind of introduce yourself where God has you in this current phase
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  SPEAKER_00: of life right now.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I pretty much burn the candle wherever I can.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: If there's not enough wicks, I can find another one.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I'm in,
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  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say in full-time ministry,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I do pastor at Gospel of the Baptist Church,
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  SPEAKER_01: work full-time as a national sales manager,
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm in seminary,
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  SPEAKER_01: I run a pottery studio with my wife, and anything else I can find to do.
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  SPEAKER_00: Man, you really are burning the candle at both ends.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Squeezing as much daylight as you can out of every hour, I suppose.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
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  SPEAKER_00: And talk about the Marocast and some of the projects you've got going on over there.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably shouldn't forget that one.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we started back...
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  SPEAKER_01: I guess early June,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think was the first release where me and a friend of mine,
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  SPEAKER_01: we've been going through the mirror of modern divinity,
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  SPEAKER_01: just kind of talking through the sections.
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  SPEAKER_01: The mirror was very pivotal for me, kind of in my theological trajectory.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so there's not a ton of resources out for it.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we decided that it was worth kind of bringing to the forefront,
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  SPEAKER_01: trying to make it more,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, Practically applicable, but that was kind of the reasoning behind it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so really quick, for those that don't really know, what is the marrow of modern divinity?
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  SPEAKER_00: How can we interact with this book?
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  SPEAKER_00: And kind of, can you tell some of the story behind it?
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  SPEAKER_00: I know there's a lot of debate about it in certain pockets of Christianity
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  SPEAKER_00: and Christian circles and whatnot.
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  SPEAKER_00: So can you kind of expound and explain some of the ways in which we're able
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  SPEAKER_00: to engage and interact with that book?
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it is relatively accessible online.
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  SPEAKER_01: Probably its greatest prominence as of late was Sinclair Ferguson's book, The Whole Christ.
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  SPEAKER_01: So he writes that book kind of on the controversy that the mirror produced.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of pieces that kind of drive the controversy,
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  SPEAKER_01: but what was happening in 16,
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  SPEAKER_01: 1700 England is Presbyterians were kind of falling into different camps.
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  SPEAKER_01: Preparationism,
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  SPEAKER_01: I guess would be the way to say it,
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  SPEAKER_01: was kind of taking hold within a lot of the Presbyterian circles.
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  SPEAKER_01: And you had some men like Thomas Boston who...
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  SPEAKER_01: They were on the opposite side, but they weren't really vocal.
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  SPEAKER_01: But Thomas Boston was actually visiting a congregant of his.
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  SPEAKER_01: The congregant had the book.
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  SPEAKER_01: He found it,
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  SPEAKER_01: read it,
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  SPEAKER_01: and felt like it gave him the category for all the things that he was trying to say.
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  SPEAKER_01: So he starts promoting amongst the ones that were more leaning to his side.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of created this controversy,
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  SPEAKER_01: not that the controversy was already there,
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  SPEAKER_01: but it created this controversy where it caused these guys to have a resource
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  SPEAKER_01: to give that kind of explained everything almost in a catechism
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  SPEAKER_00: because of the way
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  SPEAKER_00: that it's
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  SPEAKER_01: written.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so when it talks about the marrow, what is that driving after?
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  SPEAKER_00: What is the marrow of modern divinity actually driving after?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because I know I'm moderately familiar with the book itself.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've never read it before.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think it was compiled by Edward Fisher.
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  SPEAKER_00: But essentially, right,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's like it puts different sort of characters sort of in a dialogue and it tries
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  SPEAKER_00: to sort of get, well,
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  SPEAKER_00: to forgive the word,
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  SPEAKER_00: but it gets at the marrow of what actually faith looks like, correct?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that's the real gist.
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  SPEAKER_01: He starts out with four characters.
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  SPEAKER_01: So you've got a pastor who is kind of leading the conversation.
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  SPEAKER_01: You've got an antinomian on one side, a legalist on the other side, and then a new believer.
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  SPEAKER_01: So the new believer is kind of bringing up the questions.
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  SPEAKER_01: The antinomian is on one side answering the question.
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  SPEAKER_01: The legalist on the other side is answering the question.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then Evangelista,
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  SPEAKER_01: who is the pastor,
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  SPEAKER_01: comes in and is like, actually, let me just give you the right answer.
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  SPEAKER_01: So he's kind of arguing against both sides while answering pastorally.
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  SPEAKER_01: And he's so it's it's kind of he starts out from the beginning and which is one of
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  SPEAKER_01: the things I preach about the book.
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  SPEAKER_01: He starts out to give guidance.
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  SPEAKER_01: Kind of these covenantal categories to explain how the law should be understood,
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  SPEAKER_01: how the gospel is understood.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then he starts to apply that in the different areas that come up throughout
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  SPEAKER_01: the conversation.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what are what were some of the things that made this book so controversial?
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, I know it has been controversial in certain again,
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  SPEAKER_00: certain pockets of Christian ministry and life and whatnot.
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  SPEAKER_00: But what was one of the things that really kind of stoked those those flames
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  SPEAKER_00: of controversy, especially in the time period that you're referring to in the 1600s?
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it wasn't and it may be a little bit of a misnomer.
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  SPEAKER_01: The book itself wasn't what created the controversy.
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  SPEAKER_01: Edward Fisher was dead by the time that all this happened.
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  SPEAKER_01: But it kind of gave these guys who were arguing for the apprehension of faith,
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  SPEAKER_01: for repentance being a fruit of faith,
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  SPEAKER_01: these different aspects of being able to freely offer the gospel.
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  SPEAKER_01: They were already arguing these things,
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  SPEAKER_01: but it gave them a clear understanding Clear ammunition to be able to fight
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  SPEAKER_01: against it.
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  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost as if you had a book that was teaching a certain doctrine in our day
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  SPEAKER_01: and you'd be like,
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  SPEAKER_01: hey, don't go read that because you might end up getting sucked into it.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of the vibe that the mirror had.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was kind of like facilitating something that was already in sort of like
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  SPEAKER_00: the broader evangelical conversation, if I can use that term.
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  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it was one of those things,
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  SPEAKER_01: there's a lot in there,
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  SPEAKER_01: but the arguments are made so clearly that it was hard to argue against.
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  SPEAKER_01: So rather than trying to actually produce resources to argue against it clearly,
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  SPEAKER_01: the presbytery there actually just said, don't read it at all.
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  SPEAKER_01: They actually made it.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, quote unquote, illegal for their pastors to read or recommend it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really fascinating.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating when books like this can have such an effect.
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  SPEAKER_00: But also,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think it kind of I think it's almost like the conversation surrounding the marrow
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  SPEAKER_00: of modern divinity is almost as fascinating as the book itself and just the sense of
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  SPEAKER_00: of of how you're going to understand.
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  SPEAKER_00: What the Christian life is supposed to look like is going to be how you're going to,
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  SPEAKER_00: quote unquote,
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  SPEAKER_00: receive what this book is trying to convey,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is largely where a lot of church schisms and controversies come from,
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  SPEAKER_00: where all Where a lot of these conversations regarding,
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  SPEAKER_00: as you said,
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  SPEAKER_00: the apparition of faith,
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  SPEAKER_00: but also like the free offer of the gospel and what that faith is supposed
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  SPEAKER_00: to look like in, quote unquote, a progressive sanctification sort of conversation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Understanding of Christianity.
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  SPEAKER_00: All of those things,
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  SPEAKER_00: all of those conversations are sort of born out
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  SPEAKER_00: of like how we really understand this whole thing in the first place,
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  SPEAKER_00: which I think is kind of fascinating.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like a referendum of how you are.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Right.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that's really that's really a lot of what happened.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was what was being pressed against at its core was this idea of whether
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  SPEAKER_01: or not you could actually come to Christ,
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  SPEAKER_01: whether or not you could say come to Christ without any caveat and whether
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  SPEAKER_01: or not you would be able to to preach that Christ is calling you to come,
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  SPEAKER_01: whether, you know, in that in their minds, whether you were elect or not.
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  SPEAKER_01: So there was this whole conversation that was happening,
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  SPEAKER_01: but that's what it came down to is can we actually tell people that Jesus died
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  SPEAKER_01: for them and they can come to him if we don't know whether or not he's going
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  SPEAKER_01: to draw them?
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  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
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  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
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  SPEAKER_01: To kind of give,
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  SPEAKER_01: and I don't want to impugn all the motives of the guys that would have been on
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  SPEAKER_01: the opposite side of that, although I 100% impugned their doctrine.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think their motives were pure because they were taking their theology,
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  SPEAKER_01: arguably to its logical conclusion, and trying to be honest with their theology.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I don't necessarily think it was them trying to keep people away from the gospel per se.
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  SPEAKER_01: And arguably, I think that happens a lot even in our day.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that there's a lot of maliciousness behind some of the guys
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  SPEAKER_01: that we would push back against their teaching.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think it's them trying to be honest with the way that they perceive the text or
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  SPEAKER_01: the way that they perceive their own theology.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a really good point.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you can at least admire the honesty,
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  SPEAKER_00: even if we understand that the trajectory that they're on
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  SPEAKER_00: with whatever doctrinal position they have is going to lead,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's going to end up as Jesus sort of refers to the Pharisees as the blind leading
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  SPEAKER_00: the blind,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the rather unfortunate part is when certain communicators or pastors,
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  SPEAKER_00: theologians,
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  SPEAKER_00: whatever,
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: what have you,
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  SPEAKER_00: they are Seem to be beholden to understandings of faith and life and practice
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  SPEAKER_00: that seem to,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I've had lots of conversations about this,
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  SPEAKER_00: but they seem to either collapse or confuse words of law versus words of gospel.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: Of what those two words are and what those two words are supposed to do,
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  SPEAKER_00: that ends up breeding all kinds of, well, tired,
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  SPEAKER_00: confused,
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  SPEAKER_00: weary saints who then lead to very nonproductive ends and unfruitful ministries.
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  SPEAKER_00: So it comes back to,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think,
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  SPEAKER_00: understanding what those words are supposed to do,
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  SPEAKER_00: words of law versus words of gospel.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I've tried,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: even my own writing and speaking,
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  SPEAKER_01: I've tried to emphasize that I don't, again,
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that a lot of these people are malicious in what they're trying to do.
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  SPEAKER_01: They won't, they just want Christians to live godly lives.
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  SPEAKER_01: They're just going about it the wrong way.
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  SPEAKER_01: Like you said,
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  SPEAKER_01: when you don't have the categories of law and gospel,
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  SPEAKER_01: you're inevitably going to try and use the law and the gospel incorrectly,
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  SPEAKER_01: use the law unlawfully.
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  SPEAKER_01: When you don't have that category,
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  SPEAKER_01: you can't accomplish the means that you're trying to accomplish,
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  SPEAKER_01: even though your motive is right.
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  SPEAKER_01: You're bringing the wrong tools.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely so.
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  SPEAKER_00: Putting the cart before the horse is a lot of the ways I've tried to describe it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trying to go after the fruit of something without actually first being grafted into
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  SPEAKER_00: the vine, if you will.
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  SPEAKER_00: What did you...
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  SPEAKER_00: What were some of the things,
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  SPEAKER_00: when you first encountered the marrow of modern divinity and then dived into some of
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  SPEAKER_00: the history surrounding it,
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  SPEAKER_00: what were some of the things that really spoke to,
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  SPEAKER_00: reached out to you,
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  SPEAKER_00: so much so that you would describe it as you did as this very formative sort
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  SPEAKER_00: of piece of theology and reading for you that really kind of helped shape you?
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  SPEAKER_00: What was something about this,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: nearly 400-year-old book that really Really spoke to you and kind
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  SPEAKER_00: of maybe opened your eyes a little bit.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's trying not to,
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  SPEAKER_01: I know Mike Lewis,
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  SPEAKER_01: Michael Lewis with the Reclamation,
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  SPEAKER_01: he always says that I'm good at making short stories long.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Someone try not to do that.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: He says at least I don't make short stories boring, but the point is,
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  SPEAKER_01: That I was at, you know, I grew up within fundamentalism.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think we have that in common.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that was very, I was in some of the crazier circles of the IFV.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I say that again, I'm not impugning anyone when I say that.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's just trying to give an idea of the mindset that I had.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I began to be attracted to some of what,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
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  SPEAKER_01: what could be called the more Academically minded,
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  SPEAKER_01: or at least the least guys who I've perceived to be more honest with the scriptures,
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  SPEAKER_01: which led me into some more, you know, I guess more like lordship vibes out of this.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think I think in a way that that's I think in a way that's kind of a gateway
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  SPEAKER_01: for people who grew up within fundamentalism
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  SPEAKER_01: because it sounds like I think there it's really fundamentalism of
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: a different circle.
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  SPEAKER_01: But that's my opinion of the draw the but I ended up kind of in in that vibe.
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  SPEAKER_01: There were some things that happened with me personally.
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  SPEAKER_01: Actually, one of them, and it sounds dumb looking back, but in the moment, it was a big deal.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up getting into the point where I had a really, really high fever.
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  SPEAKER_01: It ended up causing me to have a couple of seizures.
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  SPEAKER_01: It ended up in the hospital.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was a whole thing.
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  SPEAKER_01: But I remember I was, and again, this is, I was looking back at super dramatic.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was being super dramatic.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying the circumstance was that dramatic.
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  SPEAKER_01: It really wasn't that big a deal.
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  SPEAKER_01: But looking back, I was mentally, my mental state wasn't great.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I was just, I was super dramatic about what was happening.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I'm going to die.
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  SPEAKER_01: I was convinced.
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  SPEAKER_01: I was laying in the hospital bed, again, in triage.
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  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't that big a deal, but I was convinced I was going to die.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I remember laying there thinking, I don't know if I've got enough faith.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's like there was this moment where it all kind of came crashing in.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's like I started evaluating motives.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's like all the stuff that I've been doing, I've been doing for the wrong reasons.
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  SPEAKER_01: Everything just kind of came crashing in at one time.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I had to, again,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: this has happened to me multiple times,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I've had to again kind of evaluate,
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you call it like a crisis of faith moment,
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  SPEAKER_01: not of like Christianity faith,
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  SPEAKER_01: but a crisis of is what I have right, I guess is the way to say it.
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  SPEAKER_01: So over the course of a year or so from that,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: God was gracious to me and led me to some people who were able
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: to recommend different resources and things.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: But the mirror was what it was recommended to me by someone and it was...
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: It gave me the categories that I was looking for.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was where I had had some grasp on, you know, I had some understanding of law gospel.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I had some understanding of what covenant theology would look like.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: I had some understanding of, you know, faith in Christ versus, you know, where's obedience.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had some of these understandings, but I didn't really have categories to fit them in.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So as I was reading through it and became more,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: more tuned to the way that it was handling all these things,
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: it gave me the categories and then it fit all of the questions that I had into
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: the categories where it wasn't me trying to have to,
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I didn't feel like I was just spinning my wheels.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: But the real,
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: emphasis when it comes down to it was the fact
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: that it located faith completely outside of me.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that wasn't something that up until that point that I had been exposed to at all.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was always, you know, the morbid introspection.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: That was always how I evaluated faith.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the first time that I had ever kind of gotten to the point
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: where it was like, no, this really isn't about me.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's looking to Jesus.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it sounds simple saying that because it's literally in Hebrews.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: But functionally,
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: it was it was it functionally pointed me to Jesus in a way something else,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: some other things never had.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's really good, Jeffrey.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I love hearing that story, too, because it well, it resonates with me.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of similarities in terms of like that confusion that is often.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: That is often made in certain circles of confusing faith versus faithfulness
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: and actually merging those two words together in ways that are very confusing as
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: if my standing before God.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not based on what Christ objectively did,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: but it's based on my subjective ability to be quote unquote faithful.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when we measure our standing on our faithfulness, there is going to be a very wide category.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Between God's holiness and our ability to be faithful.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'm sad that maybe it took almost dying for you to realize that.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: But also, actually, I think it actually works with one of my friends, Dan Price at 1517.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: He said before in sermons and talks and whatnot that basically he would pause it.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: What would it look like?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: To preach to people as if they're dying.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Would that change how you're preaching and going about sharing what scripture says?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because at that point,
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: if someone's on their deathbed,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: quote unquote,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: no time for them to be faithful and work through all of these different things.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have to get to, pardon this, you have to get to the marrow of what the gospel actually is.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of the point.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think with the broader conversation regarding preaching at large,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: understanding that there is a very fine thread on which our focus ought to be.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your words,
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: morbid introspection or making sure that my faith is a muscle
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: that is being worked out all the time and
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: that my faithfulness is just like getting Arnold Schwarzenegger levels of veins
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: in them.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if that's...
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Again, my standing is not based on my ability.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: If it is, I'm going to collapse.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to crack under the pressure,
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: which has proven true,
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: not just in your life or mine,
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: but throughout the centuries of church history, this has proven true.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like you said,
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: that's one of the things that one of the reasons that I'm grateful for
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: the pastoral tone that comes from the marrow was because I think in some ways,
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: and I know you've probably experienced this,
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: especially when you get into some of the law gospel conversations.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's a tendency to become very,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: for lack of better word, I say very cage stagey with law gospel.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it kind of,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: I never actually had that cage stagey point because the marrow is very pastoral in
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: the way that it handles things.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: But that also was beneficial for me because working,
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: being in pastoral ministry,
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: It would not have been good for me to have been,
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: kind of having some of these things happen while I'm ministering to people.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: So in one way,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: God was gracious not only to me,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: but to the people that I minister to by by keeping all of this in
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: a very pastoral tone.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think for that reason, it's.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: It bleeds over in a lot of the things that I say in the way that I'll even write about.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: It bleeds over into that because I never want to I never want to lose
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: that pastoral tone of theology because I'm really convinced that when we start
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: to lose the pastoral tone, we kind of we miss the we lose the plot altogether.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: We were missing.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just like you said,
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: even as pastors,
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: what we're really doing isn't so much trying to motivate people here and now.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're focusing their eyes on the world to come.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if we can focus theirs on the world to come,
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: all the other things,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: and again,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: this isn't the whole going like God,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: but the other things will begin to work themselves out.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Peter makes that point pretty explicitly that in order to get through suffering
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: in this life, you fix your eyes on the hope that is to come.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: And in order to be sanctified,
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: and second Peter is his main argument,
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: in order to become sanctified, you fix your eyes on the hope that is to come.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the real way that you're preparing people to live in this life is
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: by focusing their eyes on where they're headed.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that phrase out of Hebrews 12, it seems reductive.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: It seems as if the writer of Hebrews is kind of just coming down to this really reductive point.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: But when he says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: That sort of puts like the nail on the head in terms of what,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: broadly speaking, we could say both the Old and the New Testament are about.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was, you know, Old Testament prophets.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And saints were looking forward to this hope that they could not name.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And yet now New Testament believers are able to look back on this hope
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: that they can definitely see, but also still resonates in both cases.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's always this hope that is outside.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I love the phrases that appear all over,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: like in Hebrews 11 or so forth,
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: where it talks about that they were looking forward to,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: what does it say about Abraham, like a city that he would never dwell in.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was something that was beyond him.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was something that was outside of him.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: But even in that, it's describing our current condition.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're still pilgrim people.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're not where we belong yet.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting that even in the book of Hebrews,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hebrews chapter 12,
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: he starts arguably,
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: I would argue he starts in chapter 12 by saying,
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: look to Jesus,
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: the author and finisher of your faith,
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: before he gives any of the,
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: this is how you live together in chapters,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: primarily the end of chapter number 12 and chapter number 13.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it's a really good point.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much, we could say, Christology that happens in chapters 1 through 10 or whatever.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: But when he gets into, when he makes this sort of, you know, doxylotic, Right.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Did you say amen
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: to that?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I said, yeah, Paul, Dave.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, my argument is that Paul wrote it.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think Luke wrote it down, but it was Pauline.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's my argument.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you really want to get deep into it,
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: you can say that it was what Luke wrote down while Paul was telling him
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: about what Aquila said about Apollos' message.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's really deep.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, that way you just cover all your bases.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: You get all the theories in one.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're covering everything.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an Apollos, guys.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless,
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think the arguments that are made throughout Hebrews speak to a lot of the things
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: that we're referring to.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of...
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Ticking off other places to go for,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: to look for assurance,
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: to go for,
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: to find our standing,
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: whether that be in the case of the book of Hebrews,
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: whether that be finding your locus of faith.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: In this priest or in the sacrifices that came through the priesthood.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless of, or maybe even your heritage.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: He talks about the idea that Moses pales in comparison to Christ.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like this idea that we can venerate these heroes.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: They were all living by this word of promise.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I found so much benefit too, not only in Hebrews, but I keep, one of the verses that has really
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: What I want to say,
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: one of the verses that has really just kind of blown my,
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: like the way that I understand the scriptures in a lot of ways,
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: like blown that up and kind of re-formed it again,
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: which is,
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: it comes in Galatians,
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: where Paul talks about the notion that when God is speaking the words of promise
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: to Abraham, that he was preaching the gospel beforehand.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when Paul makes that argument,
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: now everything is,
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: it's kind of one of those same turns that happens,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: the piece that you put up on Substack recently,
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: talking about Luke 24, I've always considered that sort of like this.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: This incredibly pivotal moment in not only the New Testament,
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: but in history, in the life of the church.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think similarly,
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: that moment,
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: another sort of pivotal turn happens when Paul is like,
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, Abraham got the gospel preached to him.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that really helps shape our understanding of scripture, but also faith at the same time.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when it kind of comes down to it,
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: and again, not to harp on the marrow, but that's what I do.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Fisher does cover that in saying that what you have is you have in Genesis,
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: you understand that prior to Genesis chapter number three,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: the gospel has already happened before time.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's already the gospel is being is already there that he comes and he declares it in time.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what he does throughout the Old Testament,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: specifically with with Abraham,
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: again, with Moses and a few other times where he's come in.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: He is declaring the gospel in time, even though the fullness of time has not yet come.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: So like Christ hasn't come,
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: everything hasn't transpired,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: but what is going to happen,
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: maybe not in all of its details,
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: but the promise,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: the gospel promise is being declared to all the Old Testament saints.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what they believe.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: They believe in God's promise.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't necessarily know that Abraham saw everything.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Some people that I know argue that he did.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: But even if he did not see everything, what he did see was the promise.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: He knew that God was promising something and he put his faith in the promise of God.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the argument that Paul makes in Romans when he's talking about the words
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: of promise that and Abraham's belief in it constitutes justifying faith.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: All of this helps us understand that.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think and put into proper categories what the Christian life is supposed to look like.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: And these are conversations that have been happening for,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: centuries,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: these different controversies on what the shape of the Christian life is supposed
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: to look.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just something that's, you know, ultra modern.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: You go all the way back to Augustine and Pelagius and you could find
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: that there were very,
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: very differing ways in which Christian living, so to speak, was...
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Was to be understood and how it was to be lived,
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: which is,
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: and you could even go back even further because,
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: if you've done any reading or study on books like 1 John,
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: John was largely writing a letter to churches in response to growing,
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: they wouldn't have used the word Gnosticism,
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: but it was growing Gnosticism surrounding those congregations, which, again,
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: there seems to always have been We could say little taints of gangrene growing
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: on how the church understands what it means to follow Christ,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: to live under Christ's Lordship.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's our bent.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Our bent is towards those things.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're bent towards finding something to hang our hats on,
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: which I think it's actually,
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: it kind of leads me to another thing I kind of wanted to get at,
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: which I think is also involved with talking about the marrow,
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: but really talking about the notions that legalism and antinomianism,
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: which we can define those terms,
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: which I guess you can if you want to,
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: but they're really kind of two sides of the same coin in terms of how they confuse
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: the gospel.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can you kind of tease that out a little bit?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, which I know you're familiar with this, Martin Luther...
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of drawing on Augustine, he talks about us being bent inward.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: He almost gives us this picture where our backs are curved in and all we can see is our navel.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he's kind of a play off this idea that we're navel-gazing people,
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: that the fall bent us down where all we see is ourselves.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And until the gospel comes and lifts us upright, we can't love God because we can't look at God.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: We can't love others because we're not looking at others.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: We can only love ourselves.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really where both of these ideas of legalism and antinomianism come in.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: They're both,
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: in and of themselves,
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: they're both ways that we, you know, to use a King James word, that we navel gaze.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: We are looking at ourselves and our own desires on one end,
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: antinomian where we're, it's like, well, what God said just doesn't matter.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we're concentrating on what we want.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in a real sense, that's what legalism is.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's just at a different bent.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're concentrating on how we look.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, if we want to use that analogy, we're propping up our own self-righteousness.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make sure that what everybody sees of us looks good.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: So even though it may have a form of godliness, it's all introspective.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's all, look at me, look at what I'm doing.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we even,
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: within legalism and ethnomism both,
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: a legalistic mindset will take the law of God and attempt to point it all
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: at himself.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: You don't often talk to a legalist who's concerned with how well he's loving his neighbor.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: You talk to a legalist who is concerned with how well he is doing.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he's got all, you know, he's introspective with all of this.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: The antinomian is, it's not so much, he doesn't so much care about the needs of his neighbor.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: He cares about his own needs.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: So no matter what way you play it out, both of these are a confusion about God.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Sinclair Ferguson argues that antinomianism and legalism both misunderstand the love of God.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he points that, you know, he does that by playing out the prodigal son.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Where you have the younger brother who is arguably the antinomian and
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: the older brother who is arguably the legalist.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Both of their problem is that they don't understand the love of their father.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really good.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it speaks to a lot of the ways that, like,
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure maybe you can say the same thing that you've been the older brother and
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: the prodigal son at different junctures in life.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's this constant sort of struggle grappling with your inner antinomian,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: your inner person that wants to get rid of law,
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: get out from underneath all of those load-bearing sort of commands.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there's also this sort of inner legalist that wants to just make sure
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: that not only am I dotting all my I's and crossing all my T's,
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: but everyone else is too, and they better be living accordingly.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that Fisher does is he gives this very stereotypical view of both
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: the legalist and the antinomian.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's not this gray area.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: They're both very black and white.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the reason that he does that is just like you said,
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: we like to stereotype other people.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: But we're not black and white people.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: no pun intended,
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: but we're not people who are completely legalist or completely antinomian.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: We have both, you know, we have aspects of both of those in us.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to be aware of what both are so that we can see both of them.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think one of the things that has helped me...
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: For whatever reason,
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: when I was growing up,
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: I always used to think that the Pharisees were sort of like the Disney villains of
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: the Bible.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like they were the people that like,
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: man, you just got to like keep them like they are the bad guys in every narrative.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're the bad guys.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then I think that the catharsis, the spiritual catharsis, if you will, is realizing that.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's me.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the Pharisee.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I would.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the bad guy.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the bad guy.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as devastating as that can be,
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: then you once I think really once that clicks into place,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: that there's a there's a raging Pharisee probably within everyone's hearts,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: but especially mine, then you.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Bible just,
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: it kind of takes on this like new life and what Jesus,
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: so when Jesus is talking about like, Man, you care about all of these things.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: You want to tithe,
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: all of these different things,
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: but you've forgotten about the weight of your matters.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like he's speaking to each one of us.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's speaking to us because we're forgetting.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're forgetting what Christ at that juncture was coming to do,
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: but what he has obviously now done.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we're forgetting, we're kind of neglecting that.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're setting that to the side.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that really, really speaks to me.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that you mentioned,
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: even with that,
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: like even pastorally,
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: when you start to grapple with those things,
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: you realize that you don't take that text and preach, hey,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: you should be giving like the widow because it was actually a rebuke of
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: the Pharisees because their job was to take care of the widow.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the point wasn't, oh,
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: she gave all she had so much as it was,
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: you guys are not loving your neighbor at all.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you're so concerned with what you are doing that you have this widow here
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: who all she has is two mites.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: Great point.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it changes the focus.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of like is one of those moments where it's like when you're watching a movie
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: and you see it from a certain perspective.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you see it again from a different perspective,
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: you're like, oh, wow,
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: that changes the whole context of how this little scene is supposed
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: to be understood.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Spoilers alert for the Odyssey.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think...
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: By the time this comes out, people have already seen it.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let's be real.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: The Odyssey has been out way too long for there to be any real spoilers.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't know what the Odyssey is, then you've got a bigger problem.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really true.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: 3,000-year-old epic.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: So speaking to that point, though,
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: not about the Odyssey,
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: but about doing this pastorally, What,
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: obviously you've had an enormous shift,
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: or at least the marrow was sort of this inciting incident,
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: if you will,
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: for an enormous shift in the way that you approach Christianity and faith
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: and all those sorts of things.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it has bled,
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: and rightly so,
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: into the way that you approach sermon prep,
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: which I think is obvious,
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: if you read some of your sermons or read some of the things that you've put out.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you were talking to another fellow young seminarian who was on
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: the same trajectory,
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: what would be something that you hope that they are able to absorb or grasp out of
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: the marrow that would change the way that we preach?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, I think all of this is good.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ramble, but just remember that question.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think there's a lot of things that are good that we can talk about,
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: all of these different categories, law and gospel and preaching.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: But if it doesn't make its way into the pulpit in a way that is communicable,
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think all of this is kind of,
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: it's good, but it's not actually on the ground beneficial.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: So all of this stuff,
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: and again,
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: to echo your sentiment,
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: this is what makes The Marrow of Monitor Divinity so profound.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Actually,
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: another book,
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: if I can recommend it, In a similar vein, Horatius Bonner, he wrote this book.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a short,
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: really short book,
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: but it's called,
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: the book is titled A Question,
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: How Shall I Go to God,
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: which has a similar chapter in it, by the way, in which he's taught.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about a young believer in a gospel sort of pastor.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're going at it about what is, where's assurance located and whatnot.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the same sort of point.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is meant for people on the ground.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is meant for people Living daily lives,
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: people getting up and going to construction jobs for 16 hours or people going
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: to work in an ER for another 12 hour shift or people struggling to put,
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know, bill payments back to back.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: How does the marrow or how should the marrow inform a preacher in whatever context,
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: whether large or small, whatever position God has put him in?
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the marrow,
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: just like with Bonner, you know, the answer to his question was Christ will do.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then this conversation that's happening.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what Fisher and the marrow presses in.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day,
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: like you said,
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: there's all these different theological,
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: things that are happening within the book that are fun to read and fun to talk about
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: and fun to discuss.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: But all of theology has to be practical.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean that in the best way.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: obviously some of these things are taken and used in ways that they're not meant
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: to be used.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: But if theology has no application on your life,
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: it has no point, then you've missed the point of the theology.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know one way I've heard,
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: but I think you even kind of said earlier that all of theology has
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: to be doxological.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: It has to have this turn where it causes something to happen in us.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what the book itself forces in.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: Pastorally speaking, what we're doing as pastors, we're not here just to explain the text.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're not here just to even to apply the text itself.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there's some argument about this within different pastoral contexts.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: But in order to rightly apply the scriptures,
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: what you are doing is you are rightly applying Christ.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the points that Fisher presses in.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I know our brothers over 15, 17 make a big deal about Christ for you, and rightfully so.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we do as pastors.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: The point of every text ought not to be just,
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: this is kind of what I had written on recently about this idea
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: of Christ-centered preaching.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: The point of every text is Christ, yes, but not just getting to the story of Christ.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: The point of every text is how are you applying Christ to the need that the text is giving you?
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: And how can you understand your congregation in such a way that you can apply Christ
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: to their need?
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: So as you're coming to these different texts, you're not just looking for the story of Christ.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how does how does the gospel complete the story, quote unquote?
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: The way that, that,
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: fish in the mirror,
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: the way that he gives and the way
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: that all these other men throughout this time period are giving
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: who would find themselves in that same vein is you've been given a whole Christ.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no need, Thomas Boston talks about it this way.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: He said, there's no need to split Christ up.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: You're not dividing Christ into pieces and then giving people the piece of Christ
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: that they need in whatever place that they're at.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: You're giving people a whole Christ because they,
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: when it comes, yes,
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: you can see parts of their need,
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: different parts of their life,
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: but they have a whole need and that whole need is only going to be satisfied by
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: a whole Christ.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: He brings with him all of his benefits, you know, adoption, sanctification.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: He brings with him all of these things.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if we miss the if we start to hyper fixate on,
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: sanctification or whatever it may be,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: if we start to hyper fixate on these things,
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: we miss the whole the whole the wholeality.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the right way to say it, but we miss the whole Christ.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: So as pastors,
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: our call is to present a whole Christ for the need that the text is presenting,
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: not just running back and saying,
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: it's not just,
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: and again, I'm not, I'm not downing this understanding because it's true.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is a better David, but he's not just a better David.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: He's a whole Christ.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: He's a, yes, he's a better king, but he's also a better priest.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's a better prophet.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: He's a better everything that you stand in need of.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the real,
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: the real,
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: The real work,
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: in my opinion,
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: of a pastor as he's engaging with the text is to find the problem in a real sense,
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: the problem that the text is giving us,
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: expose that, but expose a whole Christ that fits in the problem.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: And in reality,
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: he needs to know his congregation well enough to know what the problems
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: that his congregations are facing so that he can apply Christ to their need as well.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Can you give me an example of what that might look like in terms of applying
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: the whole Christ to a certain text and not just like tacking them on at the end
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: as like, oh, yeah, and here's the gospel now?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean,
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to think through one recently that we've,
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know, something recently that I've preached where I've attempted to do that.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean,
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: First Peter may be a good example.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: First Peter is he's constantly speaking to the suffering of people.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the point that he makes,
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: he does this contrast between,
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: what we understand is this theology of the cross versus this theology of glory.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: We all are bent together.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: Towards a theology of glory.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's arguably what the two disciples in Luke chapter 24 were encountering.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: They had a theology of glory.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: They were looking for a Messiah that was going to do something in
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: a very specific way,
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: but they missed the suffering of the Messiah that was necessary.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Jesus says, wasn't it necessary?
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't it have to happen this way?
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: So in a sense, he he is presenting.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: And again,
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes we get this wrong idea that he's just like,
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: hey, this was me and this was me and this was me and this was me.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was presenting him his whole his whole self,
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: the suffering and the glory that was happening in the Old Testament.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if you if you kind of begin and this is again,
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: this is the work of pastoral ministry, in my opinion.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: As you begin to think through these things,
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know, where may a certain person be on any given Sunday?
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, odds are, like you said, odds are they're tired at best.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're tired and they're just really fed up with dealing with the craziness of life.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm not in the bad way.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not just saying they're like,
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying somebody's suicidal or anything,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: but they're just to the point,
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: they're just, I mean, like we all are, they're tired, they're run ragged.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: So at best you have people that are in that position.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you give them?
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's not, you know,
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: God wants you to give and Jesus gave everything for you.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: So go out and give in response.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: And again, these aren't untrue things.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: But you begin to miss all of where the need is actually at.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: So again,
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm kind of running all over the place,
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: but going back to this idea of suffering,
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: if you are presenting Christ in such a way where he came and he lived this life
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: of suffering and in all aspects, he was tempted in all ways that we are.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hebrews says that he's a high priest who is touched with the feelings of our infirmities.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: We have this whole Christ who came and did all of these things.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't have to look for him just in, you know, just in where that text applies primarily.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: You can offer a Christ that, that,
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: because everybody in your congregation is going to be going
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: through something different.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can offer a Christ that lived this whole life of humiliation,
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: this whole life of suffering on their behalf.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason that he did that was to redeem them from that whole life.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like,
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: you don't, again, I'm,
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Doing my best to parse this out and without making it confusing because I'm good at
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: that, but good at being confusing.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: But when I say you're having to apply Christ to their need,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: you're not having to, again, cut him up in little pieces.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to say,
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: well, how does Christ fit into this person who's having financial trouble?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because the person beside of him may not be having financial trouble.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in trying to,
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: the term is not,
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know, not to quote unquote expose your congregation as individuals.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: You need to be able to apply him to your entire congregation,
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: but understanding where your congregation is.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there is,
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: there is places within more individual,
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: individual ministry where that I think happens.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: But overall,
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: you're showing them the Christ that came for them,
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: the Christ that was lived a life of suffering, of humiliation.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he had no place to lay his head, all of these things.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're applying that,
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: you're applying the Christ who died for their sins,
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: who lived a life of righteousness that could be imputed to them.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was resurrected and reigning and will one day come again to call everyone to himself.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you're applying this whole Christ and implying this whole Christ,
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: you are meeting their need where it is.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: Would that make sense?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, it does.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: Especially in the note of suffering,
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: because you could pull in multiple themes to sort of,
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: you could pull multiple threads together to sort of make an application on that.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not only is the Christ the one who suffers for us,
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: he's the Christ who suffers with us,
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a really great way to understand that is not only you could talk about
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: the ways in which,
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: as a preacher,
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: you could say,
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: you could talk about the ways in which Christ is glorified through suffering.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews makes that point really well.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: But then also like in the book of Acts, when...
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: The resurrected Christ shows up to Paul.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: He talks about the way he relays to Paul the notion that when he was persecuting
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: the church, Christ was feeling that persecution as well.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: So there is this ongoing sense that when the church suffers,
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Christ is suffering with them in a very real way.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that speaks to the notion that God is,
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know, one of God's names, Emmanuel, he is God with us.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: That is not sort of just in very specific moments.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: That is an ongoing reality that he is with us through whatever you might be enduring.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's larger than just
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: the incarnation.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great way to say it, Jeff.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: He is larger than that.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: He is a whole Christ for every single situation that we might find ourselves in,
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: in any circumstance.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: He is Emmanuel.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: So financial struggles, cancer diagnoses, job, not going so hot.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: Communicating that and conveying that is,
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're right,
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: as part of the pastoral process,
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: Obligation,
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: but also that's like the real work,
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: the real work of,
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: studying a text is,
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: is being submissive,
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: but also being in,
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to sound super like But being in tune with the spirit enough
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: to perceive how that ought to be communicated.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think,
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: we could harp on this for a while,
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: but, you know, 2 Corinthians or 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: It comes by being submissive to the Holy Spirit.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the work is just that not trying to like force whatever we want to say
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: into a certain text or whatnot.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think even to that point.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I think a lot of times within preaching,
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: what we do have a tendency to do is we try and do the Holy Spirit's work for him
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: in our preaching.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the, the,
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: the way,
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: so there's,
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: this is a,
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: now I'm trying not to geek out on this,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: but there's a guy named John Anderson,
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: super, super, you know, he's, he's not very well known at all.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: Not, not,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: not the singer,
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: but this is, so there was, there was a, there was a pastor named John Anderson.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: But, so he, he wrote this book called The Apprehension of Faith.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: The point that he makes there,
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: and a lot of what I've tried to convey,
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: or even what I've tried to convey today,
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of that kind of comes from the way that he presents it.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you come to a text,
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: and maybe this is an example of that,
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: you come to a text where,
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know, let's say the woman who touches the hem of Christ's garment, right?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you come to this text, you have this woman who has this very specific need.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: The tendency, I think, would be to try and apply that text to that specific need.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just say it's ongoing sickness.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the tendency would be to apply the text to that.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: But in doing that, you are not applying, you're not giving the whole Christ.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're trying to, again,
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: when I try to do the work of the Spirit,
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: you're trying to do the work of the Spirit and trying to hyper,
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: hyper apply that text in the way that it's being given.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: Where the way that you would want to do that,
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: in my opinion,
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: is you would want to offer the whole Christ who redeems all of suffering.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the spirit will then apply the part that they need to them.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you're offering,
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: and again,
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: to come back to kind of John Anderson, his point was you offer a whole Christ.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: That whole Christ produces in people faith and the faith comes by hearing.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it's producing in people faith by seeing the whole Christ.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then the spirit is applying Christ by faith to the need that the person has.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: So when you start to hyper fixate,
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: cut Christ up into pieces and hyper fixate what he's doing,
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: you're really doing the work of the spirit and you're not offering
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: the entire congregation Christ.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: So their faith is being strengthened like the person beside them, maybe.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: However, that makes some sense.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, it does make a lot of sense.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: Zach Eswine in his book,
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Imperfect Pastor,
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think he makes that very same point that the pastor,
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: the preacher,
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's not part of their job description to be the Holy Spirit for their congregation.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not only is that impossible, it's outside of the scope of their responsibility.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's beyond their ken.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's beyond their purview.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the major pitfalls that I've come to perceive as,
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in ministry for a little while and understanding what pastoral ministry is
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: and what it looks like and what maybe ought to what it ought to be.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: One of the pitfalls that I find, especially in preaching, is just that.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: Preachers fall into that trap of trying to be everyone's Holy Spirit.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's how it applies specifically to your situation.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: And not only is that impossible,
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: but God's The Spirit of Christ is a way better communicator and applier of the Word
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: than you are.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that realizing that is, number one, it's humbling, but also it's freeing.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's freeing to understand and realize that that's not my job.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: I need to,
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: there's a specific task that a preacher has,
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: obviously, but That part, that's beyond my job description, which is really freeing.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's one of the things I even,
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: so we, on Wednesday nights, we do a, like a midweek theology class.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the things I was saying yesterday is a lot of times as preachers,
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: and we, you know, we even taught this in different preaching classes.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, we have to learn how to apply the text.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, what does this mean?
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: This means,
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that I explained it yesterday was,
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, what you're taught to do is you shouldn't commit adultery.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to apply that by saying, you know, don't be alone with a woman.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: I said, but why?
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked him, I said, what's the problem with that?
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a little bit of sad.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was afraid to answer.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, the problem is God never said, don't be alone with a woman.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: I said, God said, Don't commit adultery.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the point that I was making is,
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: is we're not given the task of applying the text in ways that God never said
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: to apply it.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's not our job.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you don't,
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: you're like, kind of what you're like, we're not, we don't have to micromanage God.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: We just speak what God said.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: We offer a whole Christ and the Spirit does the work.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, that's not a cop out because that's not easy to do.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not easy to apply a whole Christ to the need of your congregation from the scriptures.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: You have to do work to do it.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: You have to really deal with the text.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: But even in,
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: Paul makes the point in 2 Corinthians that That we are as ministers,
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: and this is kind of the way that Gerardus Voss explains that text,
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: but the point that Paul makes is that we are to gaze on Christ so long that
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: the longer that we behold Him, the more that we look like Him.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then what we do with the congregation is we hold up a mirror
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: and we're not holding a mirror to themselves.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: You look like now is Christ.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not there to, again, we're not there to micromanage God.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: What we're doing is we are offering Christ hard stop.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: There is no how do I apply this and make people do something.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's really how do I apply Christ to the need that this text is presenting.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really good, Jeffrey.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it helps us understand our role,
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: but also it helps us understand that,
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: again, not to be reductive, but Christ is always the point.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so again, Christ for you.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: That message is sort of this load-bearing sort of overarching way in
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: which we can describe this is what I want to give.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: These are the goods that I want to hand over.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's Christ alone, Christ always, Christ only.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when that becomes sort of like this...
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: That message that just kind of oozes out of a pastor,
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: it's probably because that pastor understands their own need for
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: that very same message.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like,
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think people hear that sometimes and they,
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: just like we all do,
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: they like to stereotype it as we,
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: you're just preaching death, burial, and resurrection.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well, I mean, in a sense, yeah, but it goes back.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: The live, death, burial, and resurrection is what we are applying to all.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like if we don't have those things,
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: if we're not applying that,
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: we're not applying this whole Christ, what are we even doing?
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what's our point then?
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: Are we really,
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: not only are we not here to do God's job,
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: we're not here to be God to the congregation either.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what are you really preaching at the end of the day?
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: At that point,
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: you might as well be,
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: some sort of a motivational speaker just applying ways in
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: which people can maybe hopefully,
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: if they try hard enough, better their lives or at least better a portion of it.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: And again, there's part of that will come as a byproduct in certain cases.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: But again, we talked about this earlier.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's like putting the cart before the horse.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things that I'm very convinced of is that
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: the Christian life is not sort of this life of a carrot dangling at the end of
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: a stick where it's all about trying to reach this thing and hoping that we grab it.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's actually the handing over of a gift.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's always that extension of it.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's an offer that is objective,
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: so it's real,
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: but it's an offer that is free and it's an offer that is never sort of rescinded.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: And right there we can understand the preaching task, so to speak.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like,
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: I know one of the analogies that I've used before is,
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know, we,
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: like you said,
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: we have this,
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: we want to say, okay,
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: you need to effectively learn to use the carrot or effectively learn to use
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: the stick.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: But when you have the cart before the horse, the cart doesn't care about carrots or sticks.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't do anything.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like you're trying to use different means to get a cart to go
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_01: that has no engine behind it.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you may be the best carrot wielder or the best stick wielder
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: that there's ever been, but if all you've got is a cart, then good luck.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: Jeffrey, where can people find you online?
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where can people connect with you if they want to read more,
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: but also hear more from you,
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: especially as you and your co-host dive into the Marocast?
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: So for the most part, everything can be found at marocast.com.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's M-A-R-R-O-W-C-A-S-T.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I do have,
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have a good bit,
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_01: you know, full disclosure, I completely ripped off everything that you do.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if you go to that,
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: if you go there to that,
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: the Substack platform,
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_01: The vast majority of the sermons that I've preached over the past year or
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: so are there.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: All of the episodes that me and John Meeks have been doing,
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: Walking Through the Mirror, are there.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of the writing that I've done over the past year and a half or
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: so is all there as well.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, make sure to go to subscribe, merocast.com.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Great Substack to really get a regular dose of Christ for you in a lot
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: of different ways.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: So Jeffrey, thanks for hopping on.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for spending time with me this morning.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's been great just reflecting on that very message Christ for you.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks, man.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Ministry Minded Podcast.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks so much for Jeffrey for hopping on.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you hit the show notes.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: Check out all the links where you can connect with Jeffrey.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to some of his podcasts and read some of his really, really fantastic articles.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you do.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: That would go a long way.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I thank you for that.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: Stick around.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be doing a couple more episodes throughout the end of the year before we get
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: into somewhat of a little break over the holidays for podcasting at least.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: But a couple more that we can send out your way.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: So anyways, thanks so much for listening.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for your support.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_00: Always love hearing from you.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for that.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: So until then, I'll see you in the next episode.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: Blessings.
• 1:07:14
  [music]