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Christ for You and Why the Gospel Must Stay the Gospel with Justin Perdue · Ministry Minded

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ministry Minded Podcast.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Pastor Brad Gray.
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  SPEAKER_01: I serve as the Senior Pastor of Stonington Baptist Church right here in Pax Sinus, Pennsylvania.
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  SPEAKER_01: On this episode, I am just thrilled to have my friend and brother in ministry.
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  SPEAKER_01: Justin Perdue on the show.
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  SPEAKER_01: Justin is a pastor.
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  SPEAKER_01: He pastors Covenant Baptist Church in Nashville, North Carolina.
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  SPEAKER_01: He's also a podcaster,
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  SPEAKER_01: a theologian at large,
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  SPEAKER_01: and he loves to think deeply about many of the same things that I love
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  SPEAKER_01: to think deeply about, namely Reformation Church.
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  SPEAKER_01: We talk about all of those things.
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  SPEAKER_01: We talk about all of those different distinctions and nuances,
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  SPEAKER_01: and we try to unpack and explain not only why the
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  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm just so glad that he and I got to talk about this and
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  SPEAKER_01: so many different other things on this particular episode.
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  SPEAKER_01: So sit back and relax.
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  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy Justin and I as we hash out law gospel,
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  SPEAKER_01: pastoral ministry,
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  SPEAKER_01: and abiding in Christ and the message, of course, of Christ for you.
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  SPEAKER_01: Justin Perdue, thank you for joining the show today, Ministry Minded.
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  SPEAKER_01: A lot of my listeners may be familiar with you in some way or another.
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  SPEAKER_01: I've shared some stuff from you or about you or stuff that you've written in the past.
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  SPEAKER_01: But for some of my listeners who may not know you,
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  SPEAKER_01: this is not really for my benefit,
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  SPEAKER_01: but why don't you introduce yourself,
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  SPEAKER_01: kind of where you are, what God has you doing in this season of life?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great man.
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  SPEAKER_00: Justin Perdue, I'm the senior pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, personal info really quick.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm married to Michelle, have four kids who are 12, 11, nine and eight.
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  SPEAKER_00: So full seasons of life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right now we got football and cheerleading.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've been the senior pastor of Covenant Baptist Church since August of 2015,
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  SPEAKER_00: when the church was planted.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm also serving currently as the president of something called
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  SPEAKER_00: the Grace Reform Network,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is an association of confessional Baptist churches,
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  SPEAKER_00: so Second London Baptist Confession.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're Consciously,
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  SPEAKER_00: like reformational emphasis of extra nos and law and gospel distinction
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  SPEAKER_00: and all those good things.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can get into that if we want.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then where some people may know me,
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  SPEAKER_00: I formerly was the co-host of a podcast called Theocast for over six years
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  SPEAKER_00: until October of last year.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that show was all around the sufficiency of Christ,
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  SPEAKER_00: Christ for sinners,
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  SPEAKER_00: and encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Jesus and what he's accomplished
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  SPEAKER_00: for them objectively.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it was law and gospel clarity kind of stuff.
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  SPEAKER_00: You and I got connected.
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  SPEAKER_00: This may be interesting for some people.
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  SPEAKER_00: 1517, which is a confessional Lutheran entity,
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  SPEAKER_00: Christ for you,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, that's the tie that binds us because we have mutual friends.
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  SPEAKER_00: You've done a lot of work with 1517.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've, because of the Theocast orbit stuff,
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  SPEAKER_00: got connected to Chad Bird, Dan Price, Eric Sorensen, and others.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think Dan at one point connected the two of us Just because he knew,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's like, hey, you know, Brad's a Baptist, you're a Baptist.
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  SPEAKER_00: You guys could probably be helpful to each other talking
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  SPEAKER_00: through like pastoral issues and whatnot.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so you and I spoke, what, for the first time a few years ago.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we've been friends since.
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  SPEAKER_01: So here we are.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're the token Baptists over there.
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  SPEAKER_01: So it's only natural that we swim in the same
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  SPEAKER_00: water, so to speak.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're Baptists and our Lutheranism shows every now and then.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every now and then.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our friends like to remind us of this, yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: It seeps out.
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  SPEAKER_01: You use the words gospel, clarity.
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  SPEAKER_01: Can you put a definition to that?
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  SPEAKER_01: And then also, can you maybe...
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  SPEAKER_01: Go back to maybe the moment when that became real for you or like maybe that like
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  SPEAKER_01: where it just kind of hits you like, oh,
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  SPEAKER_01: this this is what the gospel means,
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  SPEAKER_01: because I think everyone has a different sort of quote unquote journey.
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  SPEAKER_01: They have a journey that sometimes- Some people are offended by the
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  SPEAKER_00: word journey.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think it's fine.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think it's fine.
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  SPEAKER_01: Trajectory maybe is less- Yeah, trajectory.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's different moments.
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  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's a different moment of loss or confusion or whatever.
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  SPEAKER_00: What did that moment look like for you?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to start, law and gospel clarity, law and gospel distinction.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those are phrases we use.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Effectively, the clarity of the gospel is, it's linked.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know any other way to talk about it other than to talk about
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  SPEAKER_00: the distinction between the law and the gospel.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so the law and the gospel are both good.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're both God's words revealed to us in Scripture.
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  SPEAKER_00: But talking in the most fundamental terms.
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  SPEAKER_00: Steve McLaughlin
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  SPEAKER_00: That's law.
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  SPEAKER_00: As opposed to that,
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  SPEAKER_00: so not in a negative sense, like the law and the gospel are against each other.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're complementary in God's economy of salvation.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the law and the gospel are distinct.
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  SPEAKER_00: The gospel,
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  SPEAKER_00: on the flip,
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  SPEAKER_00: reveals to us what God has done for us in the person and work of Jesus Christ
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  SPEAKER_00: that he gives us.
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  SPEAKER_00: We receive this gift from God that is Christ for us,
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  SPEAKER_00: and in receiving Christ and apprehending Him by faith, all of His benefits are ours.
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  SPEAKER_00: What is true of Him is now true of us.
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  SPEAKER_00: In Him, our sins are forgiven because He died a cursed death in our place.
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  SPEAKER_00: His death is our death.
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  SPEAKER_00: We were crucified with Him on the cross.
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  SPEAKER_00: So His death counts as ours.
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  SPEAKER_00: So in other words, our penalty that we owe God under the law has been paid by Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then he also lived as a human being representing us and fulfilled all righteousness for us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so his righteousness is given to us by faith.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then he's conquered the devil.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's conquered the grave.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so we're liberated from that oppression as well.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so we are now promised eternal life and eternal blessedness with Christ,
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  SPEAKER_00: with God forever in the new heavens and the new earth.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this is apart from anything that we contribute.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are passive recipients of this by faith.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's the distinction that I'm talking about.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's gospel clarity,
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  SPEAKER_00: because what happens a lot of times with the best
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  SPEAKER_00: of intentions amongst serious minded believers in our generation,
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  SPEAKER_00: this has been happening ever since.
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  SPEAKER_00: The first century, man, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: the letter to the Galatians,
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  SPEAKER_00: Paul and Romans, so many other places, the apostles throw sharp elbows.
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  SPEAKER_00: They go hard in the paint on the clarity of the gospel because it is always
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  SPEAKER_00: the tendency as fallen humans to try to bring works back in.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or to weave the law back into the gospel.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we cannot do that because as soon as we do, we've given it all away.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is either us, all us, in terms of what we do and contribute, or it is all Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is Paul's argument.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you're trying to I'm sorry.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus really is enough.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to return to Moses in order to be right with God and have peace with him, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's that.
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  SPEAKER_00: In terms of my own journey or trajectory,
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this depends on how long we want to talk about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Lord primed the pump for a long time in my life.
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  SPEAKER_00: I meant to trust Christ as young as nine or 10.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was in a kind of liberal church environment that was laced with moralism.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, grew up Effectively being taught that doctrine is bad because it divides.
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  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't so much matter what you believe.
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  SPEAKER_00: What really matters is that you're sincere and that you mean to be a good person.
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  SPEAKER_00: But there was no peace to be found in that.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the way that I'm wired,
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  SPEAKER_00: tender conscience,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of a thinker and I'm observant and I'm just looking around at all
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  SPEAKER_00: the hypocrisy that I'm surrounded by and had never really seen church work.
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  SPEAKER_00: Done in a way that was faithful or compelling.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen the Christian life lived in a way that was
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  SPEAKER_01: remotely authentic
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  SPEAKER_01: and honest and
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm here, there, and everywhere as a college student.
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  SPEAKER_00: After undergrad,
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  SPEAKER_00: I was a part of a church that was a church reform,
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  SPEAKER_00: like a church revitalization situation,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is where I,
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  SPEAKER_00: for the first time,
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  SPEAKER_00: ever encountered reformational doctrine and ever had a pastor who preached
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  SPEAKER_00: the Bible, preached through books of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those things changed my life, man.
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  SPEAKER_00: Over the course of years, I was exposed to reformational doctrine.
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  SPEAKER_00: Eventually,
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  SPEAKER_00: I was sent down the trajectory of like
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  SPEAKER_00: the confessional faith is what I would call it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And by confessional faith,
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  SPEAKER_00: to put it in layman's terms,
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  SPEAKER_00: I really just mean the reformational emphasis of extra nos,
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  SPEAKER_00: meaning that we are always looking outside of ourselves to Christ
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  SPEAKER_00: to say what's wrong in us.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is about the objective work of Jesus in our place.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not about subjective things in me.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not about my fervor, my discipline, my sincerity, or my obedience.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to look within ever for peace or comfort or my standing.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking outside to Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that happened for me through the influence of a pastor in the early,
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  SPEAKER_00: like this all clicked into place for me in the early 2010s.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I've been kind of where I am now for the last dozen years or so.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, where he's wrecked and undone as to how he could ever have peace before a holy God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those kinds of things.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because I always found that I, even I was in church contexts that were good generally.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I'll be quiet here in a second.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were good generally.
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  SPEAKER_00: Christ was preached.
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  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of sound doctrine.
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  SPEAKER_00: But then at the end of the day, I was pointed back in on myself somehow.
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  SPEAKER_00: So it's like all the good that you just gave me,
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  SPEAKER_00: all the good that you just held out to me in the person in the work of Jesus Christ
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  SPEAKER_00: for me, you then kind of took it all away by pointing me back to myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because when I look to myself, I got nowhere to stand.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so that continual struggle and wrestling and crisis,
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  SPEAKER_00: so to speak,
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  SPEAKER_00: was a driver for me so that when I read Saints Who Have Been Long Dead talking
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  SPEAKER_00: in terms of you're always looking outside.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're always looking to Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is about what Christ has done.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is not about the sincerity of your faith or the strength of your faith.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's about the object of your faith, etc.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those things really resonated with me and sent me on a trajectory to read and study
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  SPEAKER_00: and understand these things more deeply.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's I think that's what's interesting to me is that I've talked to many guys
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  SPEAKER_01: and gals that have gone through similar trajectories and almost all
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  SPEAKER_01: of them can point to a similar moment of to use that word that like crisis of
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  SPEAKER_01: the soul.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of it makes me think that the same is
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  SPEAKER_00: true of Luther and Calvin and many others.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what's fascinating to me is, like,
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  SPEAKER_01: I know you spent a lot of time when you were at Theocast talking about pietism,
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  SPEAKER_01: but it's like the paradox of pietism,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is meant to, quote unquote, make you better.
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  SPEAKER_01: It actually does exactly what sin does, which turns you in on yourself.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, the Latin phrase in cravatis in se, it makes you a navel gazer.
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  SPEAKER_01: It makes you looking for your hope by looking within.
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  SPEAKER_01: And the paradox of that is that it's ultimately going to lead you to a crisis because...
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  SPEAKER_01: Eventually, the fires of piety are eventually going to wane because no one can keep that up.
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  SPEAKER_01: No one can keep that burning up.
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  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
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  SPEAKER_01: In church contexts that are just filled and just brimming with pietistic living
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  SPEAKER_01: and lifestyles, which, again,
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  SPEAKER_01: is not to dismiss the need for piety,
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  SPEAKER_01: but pietism is this whole different That is,
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  SPEAKER_01: I would say,
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  SPEAKER_01: to your point about gospel clarity,
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  SPEAKER_01: is a collapsing of law and gospel or a confusing of law and gospel,
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  SPEAKER_01: which leads to all manner of ills in the Christian life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a couple of comments on what you just said.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that this crisis of soul we're talking about,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I realize what I'm about to say could Mm-hmm.
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  SPEAKER_00: Both of those things or a legalistic environment, moralistic.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm using various terms at all.
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  SPEAKER_00: To me,
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  SPEAKER_00: the commonality between those is that they are all a piece of the subjectification
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  SPEAKER_00: of religion.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're making it about us rather than about Christ for us.
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  SPEAKER_00: So if you're in one of those contexts,
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  SPEAKER_00: you do end up having this crisis of soul at some point if you are a sane person.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like if you are self-aware at all and you see the depth of the corruption
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  SPEAKER_00: that still runs in you,
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  SPEAKER_00: even though you have trusted Christ,
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  SPEAKER_00: whatever language we want to use,
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  SPEAKER_00: though you've been born again or though you've been baptized,
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  SPEAKER_00: you still see this corruption that runs so deep.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what do you do with it?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're pointed to yourself perpetually and you're told that you need
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  SPEAKER_00: to be good enough or this enough,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're going to eventually run into a bar that you can't clear.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then what do you have?
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  SPEAKER_00: You either have Christ for you in your place who is enough to save even you, or you got nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And why are you here?
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  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a lot of other things you can be doing with your life, you know?
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I think everybody runs into those moments.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think God uses them, man.
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  SPEAKER_00: I know you agree.
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  SPEAKER_00: He uses them.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's really a good place to be to despair of your own righteousness.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so that's one thought.
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  SPEAKER_00: Another thing you talked about piety versus pietism.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're all for piety.
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  SPEAKER_00: Piety is the work of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the sanctifying work of God in us via our union with Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: So piety is great.
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  SPEAKER_00: Pietism, though, is just a hyper focus on the interior of my life.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, my affections, devotion, discipline, performance, etc.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is taking our eyes off of Christ and putting them on ourselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's never good.
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  SPEAKER_01: Nope.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've often thought this, too,
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  SPEAKER_01: and maybe you can respond to this,
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  SPEAKER_01: is that many times these the ways in which we approach
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  SPEAKER_01: the Christian life was let's use pietism as a good example.
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  SPEAKER_01: It to me was.
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  SPEAKER_01: If you want to get underneath the surface of that move,
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  SPEAKER_01: it's usually,
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  SPEAKER_01: I would say,
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  SPEAKER_01: a distrust of the Holy Spirit to communicate grace into the hearts of sinners.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because when you read books like,
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  SPEAKER_01: you referenced Galatians,
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  SPEAKER_01: when you read books like Galatians,
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  SPEAKER_01: what Paul is going to do is preach a grace that is incandescently free.
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  SPEAKER_01: But then he still is trusting the Holy Spirit to do the Holy Spirit's job
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  SPEAKER_01: when he gets to Galatians 5.
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  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't just suddenly switch to yes,
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  SPEAKER_01: yes, yes, Grace, Grace, but make sure you're doing this other thing.
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  SPEAKER_01: Which, again,
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  SPEAKER_01: is going to sort of bring the law in as sort of this appendix to the preaching of
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  SPEAKER_01: the gospel.
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  SPEAKER_01: No, actually,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think what kind of veers preachers off or veers the saints in the church off is...
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  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
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  SPEAKER_01: I got to be pursuing all of these other quote unquote disciplines.
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  SPEAKER_01: I got to be making sure that this thing is up to snuff and that thing is up to snuff.
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  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't, again, it's not to say that we shouldn't be disciplining.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I, yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: To me, at that juncture,
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  SPEAKER_01: we're no longer trusting the fact that what does God say in Isaiah 55,
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  SPEAKER_01: that my words are never going to return void.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we know that that's true because in the New Testament, we know that God's words...
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so suddenly now we're not trusting the Spirit to do what the Spirit does.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, we want to
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Reasonably sound preachers, theologians lose their minds when it comes to sanctification.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean to sound condescending or jerkish in saying that,
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: but it's interesting to me,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: picking up on some of the things you were saying,
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: man, that at the level of human reason, it makes entire sense to think this way.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like that, okay, well, because...
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: From a human perspective, if we think about, all right, I need to take the bull by the horns.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I need to do this.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I need to now that because I've been born again, I need to take control of my Christian life.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And though nobody would ever say sanctify myself, that's kind of what is implied.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I need to grow.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And here are all the ways that I go about doing that.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so much of it, of course, is grounded and anchored in my fervor and sincerity.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think if you survey church history and the scriptures for that matter,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: underneath every holiness movement in the history of the church is this instinct
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: that if you tell people that Christ has done everything,
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: then nobody will ever be motivated to obey or to pursue holiness.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, again,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: at the level of human reason,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: that makes sense because we all have a legal frame naturally.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we think in legal terms in this regard, the motivations for me are two at a human level.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: One, merit.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: I earned something.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or two, escape of punishment.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I avoid penalty.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're telling me that...
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Both are removed because of Christ,
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: because all the merit I could ever need, he has earned and gives me.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then all the punishment that I deserve, he has taken for me.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: When you take those two things away,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: well, then the question at a human level is, well, what's the motivation?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why do anything?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Why fight sin?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why pursue this?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why love?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Why serve?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why give?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the problem with that is
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: that we have fundamentally misunderstood what Christianity is,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: and we have, like you said, we're not trusting the Holy Spirit.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: What I would say,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: an agreement,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: maybe framing it differently,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: is we have forgotten the fact that this is supernatural,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: that we have been vitally united to the Lord Jesus Christ,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: and that union with Him is going to change everything.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we are not what we used to be.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so the objection makes sense at a human level.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to say, well,
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, if you tell Christ done everything, then they're never going to be motivated.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: If Christianity was natural.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's supernatural.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like think about Paul in Romans after he's gotten through the first five chapters
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: and all the wonderful things that I don't need to overview in detail,
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: but laying everybody low with the law.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's guilty.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: The law shuts everybody.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: justification by faith as modeled for us most profoundly in Abraham,
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: and then this peace with God because of our justification in Christ,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: forward-looking,
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: just as the guilt and sin of Adam were counted to us,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: the righteousness of Christ is counted to us,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: so then the objection, the anticipated objection.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we should just sin then.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: If where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more, we should just sin.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, how does Paul respond?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say by no means,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: because he says by no means,
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: but he doesn't say by no means, here's what the law says.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: He also doesn't say,
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: By no means,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: if you are a real Christian and want to prove yourself sincere and not a faker,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: you'll do this.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: He says, by no means, we have been baptized into Christ.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have been united to the Holy One.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have been justified from sin's guilt.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have been set free from its dominion.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: We have now become obedient from the heart.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's Romans 6.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how we respond.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we want to talk in these supernatural, Holy Spirit, vital union with Jesus ways.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes no sense to the natural mind.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think you're right.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: We try to play the Holy Spirit in so much of this.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: There was something else you said that we can pick up on in a minute.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about biblicalism and this kind of both and thing.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about that in a moment.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think what you're talking about in terms
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: of like this natural versus supernatural thing,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: it immediately makes me think of why Paul spends so much time,
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: especially in 1 Corinthians 1 through 3, talking about the idea of...
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: 100% man.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some theology of the cross in that too and all kinds of things
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: that we can talk about because it's upside down to us in terms of how we would think
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: that God would work.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: God often hides himself in opposites.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: We can talk about that.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a little bit about something you raised though, this kind of both and thing.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you referenced it in particular regarding faith in Christ and works of
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: the law kind of stuff.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Where it's, it's yes, faith in Jesus, or it's yes, it's Jesus, but it's also kind of me.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think that's a very common understanding.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there are many, many ways this is communicated.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are many systems of thought and labels we could put on it that we don't need
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: to do right now.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I think where a lot of this hails from,
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: particularly for me, man,
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't know about you,
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: but coming up through,
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: generally speaking, like broadly Baptistic, non-denom evangelical churches.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: So evangelicalism in general is characterized by a number of things.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is biblicism.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And by that, we mean kind of an obsession and a fixation with chapter and verse.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're just going to read the Bible.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what it must clearly just mean.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's also an allergy to creeds and confessions,
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: anything that is outside of the scripture.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so, right.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there's kind of this This untenable position and posture of like,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know, no creed but the Bible, no confession but Christ.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, yeah, it's not possible.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a creed.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a confession.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a framework.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: The question is whether your framework is any good or not.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is what happens.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's where I'm going to go.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: We could pick a number of examples, but just take Jesus in the Gospels.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: His earthly ministry,
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: he interacts with different groups of people over the course of three years.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so he speaks differently to different groups of people,
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: which we can unpack more maybe in a minute.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: But there are places I would say more often Jesus speaks in terms of law
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: than he does in terms of gospel,
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: because he's often talking to people who are either self-righteous,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: thinking that they are righteous or think they have ability to attain it.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so he preaches the law in all of its holiness in order to lay people low
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: that they might be undone and driven to their only hope for righteousness,
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: which is him.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: So he'll say things like, you need to keep the commandments.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do this and you will live kind of stuff.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Love God, love neighbor, all that.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: He'll talk like that.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then in other contexts,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would say when he's talking to people who know they have no righteousness
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: of their own,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: who know that they got nowhere to stand if they're looking to themselves,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: know they need him effectively, they need Messiah.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: He speaks words of forgiveness and mercy and grace and compassion.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Faith in me.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: this is the work of God,
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: that you believe in him whom he sent, you know, things like that.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So people will read the Gospels,
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: and because we're approaching the Scripture without a sound framework,
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: apart from creed, confession, etc., Doctrinal formulation.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: We pit verses against each other.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we do this kind of shrug of the shoulders where it's like,
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: well, you know, it's kind of both.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because over here he says, believe in me.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: And over here he says, keep the law.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of both.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: To which we would say, no, that is not the way to read it or understand it.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, context matters.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: You ask a law question, you're going to get a law answer.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: But aside from that,
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: it's like, no,
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: perhaps the better way to understand this biblically And from
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: a framework perspective is that one provides the other,
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: that faith in Jesus Christ for you provides righteousness under the law,
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: rather than saying, well, it's faith in Christ and it's your obedience.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's a conflation and a collapsing of categories that undermines any possibility
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: of peace and assurance.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the best examples of what you're talking about is one of
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: the ones that's most often cited also for this notion that is quote unquote both
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: and.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's John 15 when Jesus is going on and on.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: There is no branch that can bear fruit unless it abides on the vine.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Indication of piety, religiosity, yada yada.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: You've missed the whole point of what I think Jesus is emphasizing
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: and what he's emphasizing through John in both the gospel and the letter,
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: which is, are you abiding in the vine, which is a very painful.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we encourage branches to go about the business of duct taping fruit to themselves.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's effectively what we do.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those means the Lord Jesus Christ is present and is ministering to his people
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: through word and sacrament.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what's going to result in you bearing fruit.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's because of him.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Your language is perfect.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Him working in and through you is going to result in this.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: We don't emphasize that nearly as much as we scold and reprimand the branches
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: and encourage them to just do more and try harder in order
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: to prove their legitimacy,
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: like prove that you've been united to the vine through what you now produce.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just not the way the Scripture speaks and not the way
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: that we should reason theologically.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: You brought up 1 John.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of the more transformative series in the life of our church over
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: the last 11 years because most of our people had always heard that letter unpacked
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: or taught as this litmus test of salvation.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're measuring yourself constantly.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's tests of assurance all over the place.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Tests of assurance, tests of legitimacy, right?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of understanding that John's tone and his emphasis
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: and his aim are different,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: he's writing to a church that has been bombarded by false teaching and apostasy.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he's writing to the saints to encourage them of their legitimacy.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: And to point them to Christ for them and to encourage them
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: to keep doing what they've been doing and not to question their standing because
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: of all this stuff that's happened and because of these people
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: who have abandoned them and have taught these false doctrines.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so that anyway, that's probably a podcast in and of itself.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think another one,
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: you mentioned John 15,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think another text,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: maybe two,
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: that I would point people to on this whole both and thing,
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: where it shows it,
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: it rears its head, Romans chapter two, and then Romans eight and four.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think Romans two,
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: where you,
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: verses six and following,
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: where you get Paul, this is in the midst of him laying everybody low with the law.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he says,
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: True things there,
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: that God is a just and impartial judge,
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: and he rewards those who do good, and he effectively punishes those who don't.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not the hearers of the law, but the doers of the law who will be justified, right?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that's often exposited and preached is in evangelical contexts,
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: people will say, well, of course, it's by grace through faith in Christ alone.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, that's true.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: But there is also a sense in which our Holy Spirit wrought obedience is necessary.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that passage, Romans 2, 6 through about 13, 14, is a litmus test of its own.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not unique to me.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Robert Haldane in his Romans commentary says something like this,
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: as a paraphrase,
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: that you leave Romans 2 a Protestant or a Romanist and there is no middle ground.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like you're either trying to weave your works.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care if they're rod of the Holy Spirit.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're either trying to weave your works into your standing before the Lord or you're not.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's either all it's Christ and it's all Christ or it's Christ and you.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all Christ is Protestant.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's Christ and you is Romanist.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's, I think, profound.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: even in that context,
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I alluded to this earlier, God rewards those who do good.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's Paul going to say just not that many verses later?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: There are none who do good.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's none who does good.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's none who do good.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: God rewards those who seek him.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: What's the problem?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's no one who seeks for God.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: God would absolutely reward the righteous.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: He would justify the righteous.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the problem is there's no one righteous.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, not one.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so clearly it's not about us.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's about Christ for us.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 8.4.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Many are familiar with Romans 8.1.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: For God did what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his son in
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: the likeness of sinful flesh.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: He condemned sin in the flesh.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says that.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: what Jesus came to do was so that the righteous requirements of
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh,
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: but according to the Spirit.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, often, again,
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: the way that that's preached is that there is a sense in which
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: the righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in us in that by the power of
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: the Spirit, we are now able to obey the law adequately.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Or we're able to obey the law well enough to prove our legitimacy.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's not at all what Paul means.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, again,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: whether it's John Calvin or Robert Haldane or Luther or whoever,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: it's like, yeah, this is not what Paul is speaking to.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: The righteous requirements of the law are speaking only of what Jesus has done
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: for us in our place that's then counted to us.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's no way,
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: you know this, Brad,
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: my imperfect sanctification,
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: your imperfect sanctification,
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: there's no way that that could ever attain to what could be called
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: the righteous requirements of the law.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's only one person whose righteousness is, Is that, and it's Christ.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's talking about forgiveness of sins and the imputation of
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: the righteousness of Jesus is what Romans 8, 4 means.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And to walk according to the flesh,
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: thinking of like Romans 9,
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: 30 to 10, 4, is to seek to establish your own righteousness.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: To walk according to the Spirit is to submit to God's righteousness and to see
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: and confess and apprehend that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: who believe.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: As we as we kind of keep teasing this out a little bit, what what would you say?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think there's huge ramifications.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of like the impetus behind why I want to talk to you about this.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's massive ramifications for the way in which you lean in terms
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: of your preaching, like as we're talking about.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you think that it's about if like, let's we can we'll put it this way.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you're A preacher who emphasizes abiding on the vine versus a preacher
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: who emphasizes fruit bearing.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think those might seem...
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: So parallel, but actually they're not.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if you take both of those to their nth degree,
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: it's going to lead to very different outcomes,
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: both for you and those who are listening to you.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: So as and I think about this,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: especially in terms of our current moment,
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've talked to people in different venues and different contexts,
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: and there's this And I don't think this is anything new,
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: but it seems as though we feel as if our moment is the moment that is
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: the most immoral in history, which
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: is mean.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's so naive and uninformal.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's very naive and uninformed.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what it has done is it's led some churches and preachers
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: to feel this impetus that in order to,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: quote unquote, win the culture, we need to Start preaching morals.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that is going to be somehow,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: that I think,
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: we may not think about it this way,
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: but I am convinced that if we have this notion that we can win people to Jesus
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: by preaching the morals of Jesus to them,
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: that that's the nth degree,
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: or maybe even a little bit,
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: not totally nth degree,
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: but that's the trajectory of the fruit bearing focused preacher, if I can say that.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so what do you say to someone,
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm rambling,
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: but what would you say to someone that is saying like, oh,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: we're kind of like splitting hairs or we're kind of making too much of a big deal,
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: or maybe we're just Theo bros that,
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: love to talk about homiletics and theology and we're just stuck in the Reformation,
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: which I don't think that's true, but maybe it's true a little bit.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: But what would you say to someone that is trying to,
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Don't say that maybe we're making too much of a big deal about this notion
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: of abiding versus fruit bearing.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: I have a number of thoughts.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: First, I'm going to speak to what you were talking about,
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: like the angst and the heartburn of the cultural moment.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll speak to that.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm going to speak to what I think is another big factor here in terms
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: of why preachers go toward the fruit bearing direction.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm happy to talk about why we're not splitting hairs and why this matters.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think on the cultural side of things, man,
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think we need to acknowledge that there is a uniquely American phenomena
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: at play here where our society, we don't need to get into the history of all of it.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: You would only make some of the arguments that That you alluded to,
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: if you're dealing with a context in which there were agreed upon cultural mores
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: at one time that people have perceived to have shifted and they think that it's
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: the church's responsibility to transform culture and overhaul the government.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Those are misinformed notions first and foremost,
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: and they are inherently hitched to a pietistic and revivalistic utilitarian view of
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: the faith, right?
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like what is your faith doing?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's another conversation.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then, so I think you're right in diagnosing that.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the words that I want to speak to immediately there is,
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: This morality thing is whenever I talk to nonbelievers and they are agnostics
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: or skeptics or whoever,
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: like I remember an encounter on an airplane with a guy a year or two ago,
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: and he really thoughtful European dude that was sitting next to me.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it was one of those, you know, classic situations, right, where it's like a late flight.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gassed.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've been speaking at an event and the guy next to me wants to talk.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, and I'm and I don't.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm like, I'm going to love this guy and I'm going to engage.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it comes up pretty quickly that I'm a pastor.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like geeked,
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: fascinated and intrigued because he's into philosophy and he's been reading
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: on religion and this and that and the other.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he wants to know my thoughts on things.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he asks me my thoughts on Islam.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: He says, if you ever read the Quran, I said, well, I've read a good bit of it.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, what do you think about Islam?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, well,
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that Islam,
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: like every other world religion outside of Christianity is a religion of law.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that fundamental thing, Christianity is not first and foremost about morality.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is a message.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a proclamation.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's about news of what God has done in this man, Jesus of Nazareth, right?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's huge.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that gets to how we preach.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what you have as a result of that methodology and some of the manipulation and
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: the tactics and the methods and the measures,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: you have a lot of people walking aisles and praying prayers and all this stuff.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there's all these false professions of faith.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: So nominalism, Christianity in name only, has become a chief concern.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that many preachers in the serious-minded evangelical world think that
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: the biggest problem that the church faces in our generation is nominalism.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bunch of fakers out there.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so what do we need to do as preachers?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we need to smoke out the fakers.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how do we do that?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: We turn up the temperature on obedience and on fruit bearing, right?
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that we can test people and force them to examine themselves in such a way
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: that they will see that they are in fact fakers and not legitimate.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the irony in all that is if you're speaking to people who you understand
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: to be unregenerate,
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: like dead in their trespasses and sins,
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: you don't need to tell dead people to try harder.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to tell dead people to be holy.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: You need to kill them with the law and give them Christ.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: That, again, another conversation.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so I've kind of assessed a few things.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why is what we're talking about really important and why are we not splitting hairs?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just say this at the outset.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: I care for my own life,
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: for the sake of my family,
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: for the sake of my church, for the sake of my community, and beyond.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: I care about obedience and fruit bearing.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think that they're good.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Obedience is good.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Bearing fruit is good.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: The sanctifying work of God is marvelous.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we are all for all of that.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: We are not like some,
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: antinomian people who think it matters not at all how you live and you don't need
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: to concern yourself with loving and serving your neighbor.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's ridiculous.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: So having said that,
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: the question needs to be asked,
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: well, how is real fruit, how is sanctification going to happen?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And biblically speaking, the law cannot change a person.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the law and so law meaning imperatives.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do this, don't do that, that kind of stuff.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: The law has no power to change.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: It can only kill, and it at best can show us right and wrong, good and bad.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: It can guide us in that regard, but it can't change us.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: So what is it that will change us?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's only one thing.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's the power of the Holy Spirit,
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: but it's through the proclamation of Christ and through the administration
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: of his sacraments that feed our souls.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you want to see sanctified people and you want to see good works
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: and you want to see fruit produced,
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: then you better preach Jesus to people rather than pointing them to themselves.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I think it matters because I think that this other method
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: of getting about it,
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think that you actually, you said, put the cart before the horse.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you've actually robbed us of the, you've taken our eyes off of Christ.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: You've pulled us away.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: You've disconnected us from the power source and you've short circuited the whole thing.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: You now have turned this into a human endeavor of personal transformation,
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: which, I mean, people can do that in the world.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: We see that.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are all kinds of people that,
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: quote unquote,
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: clean themselves up and change their lives in terms of how they're living,
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: but there's no grace in it.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas what we're after is something that's supernatural and powered and fueled
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: by grace and by Christ for us.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why this distinction is critical,
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: because I think it actually results in real sanctification rather than
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: the appearance of it.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just talking about that even just from a sanctification level.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I've already said plenty as it pertains to peace with God and assurance
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: and standing before Him and the fact that if you keep preaching obedience
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: and telling people to examine themselves and measure themselves all the time,
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: you're going to create a church full of performers who are exhausted.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's going to undercut the message that Christ came to give us.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're so right.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think you hit the nail on the head with in terms of what we actually need to feed people.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think this kind of gets And for many reasons,
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: I consider Luke 24 and that Emmaus encounter with two,
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: random disciples to be,
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: we could say, like one of the most pivotal moments in the history of the church.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly now,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: the earliest voices of the church are made to realize what the Bible is all about,
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: so to speak.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: And finally,
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: they understand,
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: like you've been saying,
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: this is not a And I
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: think what is so fascinating to me about that moment is
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: that I've compared this.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if this is original to me.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's original to someone else, but I don't know who.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: It changes everything.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: It changes everything that came before it when you watch, you know, episode four.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: It changes everything going forward as you watch episode six.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: It has to change things.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't stay the same.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can't watch everything else the same after that moment.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Luke 24 is similarly that pivotal because now you go back and you have
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: to understand that every single time there was a landfall.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: And every single time that there is a word of promise being spoken by
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: a preacher like Paul or Peter or Barnabas,
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: whoever it might have been, it was always a reference to God.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: What happened on Golgotha?
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always going to be centered around that.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: As he says to them, have you read the scriptures?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: The Messiah must suffer that idea that this is necessary for God.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: For the saving of souls and the establishment of the church and also the redemption
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: of the cosmos.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: This was necessary and the Messiah came to fulfill it.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: Creatures get to different places because they haven't reckoned with
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: that Darth Vader moment, if you will.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: They haven't reckoned with the idea that there's a moment
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: that changes everything going before and after it.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hearty amen from me, bro.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Luke 24.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: I also think of John 5,
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: the words of Jesus himself,
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: where he speaks to a Jewish audience and he speaks of
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: the Jewish religious leadership.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he says that you search the scriptures thinking that
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: in them you find eternal life, yet it is they that bear witness about me.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you won't come to me so that you might have life.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says a few verses later, you know, don't think that I'm going to accuse you.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's another one who's going to accuse you.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Moses.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you believe Moses, you would believe me because Moses wrote about me.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Moses wrote the first five books of the scriptures,
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: the Pentateuch, as we call it, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so Christ says there that that was about him.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have the Luke 24,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: the Emmaus Road piece that's so pivotal,
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: where he not only encounters the two disciples on the road and unpacks things
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: to them, then he's known to them.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: In two ways, he opens their minds to understand the scriptures and he breaks bread.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you have word and sacrament right there.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's known to them in the opening of their minds to understand the word
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: and he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's wild.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then he does the same thing for the apostles who are gathered with him,
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: larger group setting later that evening.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he opens their minds to understand the same thing.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what does it say?
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: He opened their minds to understand everything that was written about him in the scriptures.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah,
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: that Star Wars analogy is beautiful because you cannot view the scriptures
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: the same way if you have reckoned with this moment, the Emmaus Road moment.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, certainly in a forward-looking way, that's obviously true.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you notice the ways that the apostles engage the Old Testament.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's a pattern to how they do it,
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: where they are seeing Christ in all of the types and institutions and the shadows of
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: the Old Testament.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they're heralding him from it all.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: But then when you go back yourself and look at the Old Testament, you use the lamb.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you see a lamb being sacrificed, it's pointing to Christ.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: The same is true of the sacrificial system writ large.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: The same is true of the priesthood.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then he'd sit down at the right hand of God.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: He lived forever to intercede for his own.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or the tabernacle and everything that it represents.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: Or the priest's garments.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that you have these gems and all the stones that represent the 12 tribes
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: of Israel on the high priest's chest, like on his heart and on his shoulders.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, what's that about?
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: What's that Jesus carries his people with him always on his shoulders and on his heart.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: It changes everything in terms of how you preach the whole of Scripture.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's beautiful, man.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's so liberate.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned the priesthood thing,
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: and it just made me think,
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: because I just preached on that sort of section within Exodus,
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: and I couldn't help but think of that verse in Isaiah,
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: where it talks about that he has our names written on the palms of his hands.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's going from good to greater, so to speak.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: The priest has our names,
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: on his chest and on his shoulders,
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: but there's a greater high priest who has our names on the palms of his hands,
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: which can't, but you can't make the hop, skip and a jump to like the nails scars.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: How are we going to win culture?
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: How are we going to make a difference and all that kind of stuff?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't help but think of that moment.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's in Acts 18 or...
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's the riot in Ephesus.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 19, I think.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those chapters.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: And what's so fascinating to me is like,
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: in that Ephesus riot,
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know, all these people are like getting so mad that there's like...
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: What is he doing?
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's preaching Jesus to silversmiths.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think if there's ever a paradigm for showing the way in which
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: the quote unquote culture wars are going to be won, I think it's actually Yeah.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: We feed people the words of promise which always lead them to Christ whether
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: through word or sacrament.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is what is actually going to not only assure people in their salvation
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: but also bring people to salvation.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: Either way, it's always about Jesus.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as we get away from that,
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: we're going to be feeding them something else that's not going to satisfy.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be piddly.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be dusty.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be not satisfying in any sense of the term.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just been...
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so convinced of that, despite all of the noise, because there's a lot of noise.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of things that we could, quote-unquote, could be...
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: I
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: think your observation on the Ephesus riot is a good one.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say I think you're going to agree
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: because you effectively communicated this that the...
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that the silversmiths are no longer able to sell their trinkets or
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: that people no longer want to buy them, etc.,
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: and this is a concern for the local economy,
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: that was never at all the goal or the focus or the emphasis of the apostle.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: He never spoke to that directly at all.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: What did he do?
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was preaching Christ, and then that resulted in Correct.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: People living differently.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's important.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I would also alongside that want to say is that there is not,
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can't think of any place, Brad, and maybe you can and you can correct me.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can't think of any ink that is spilled in the New Testament.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: That pertains to exhortation and imperative and instruction from the apostles
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: to seek to transform the broader culture or to seek to transform or overhaul
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: the secular government.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there is any.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: The only words that are written pertaining to government is where we're exhorted
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: in Romans and 1 Peter to be the best citizens.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and if the government is not binding us to break the law of God, then we submit.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only thing that's written about government.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then, like, what does Paul do when he has an audience with governing officials?
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's not talking to them about how they're to do their job in terms of wielding
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: the power of the sword or whatever.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: He just is, for the sake of their own soul, is preaching the good news to them.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so that's what he's concerned with doing.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that I bring up the observation that there's no ink spilled
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: on telling us to transform culture is that I think any transformation of culture
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: that does happen as a byproduct of the preaching of Christ is up to God.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like God will do that in his own time,
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: in his own way,
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: but there's never a guarantee that that's going to happen because it's very evident
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: in the first century as the New Testament is being written.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: The assumption of the apostles is that the church is going to be a counterculture.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's never this assumption.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have it in America.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this existed in the British Empire for a long time, too.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: The assumption of Christians in the UK and in the States for centuries has been that
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: the church should be the majority culture and that the church should be the driver
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: of culture and government and everything else.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that the apostles ever had such an assumption.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think they knew that there's a way that the world is going to operate under
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: the power of the evil one.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think the assumption is that the world is going to be what it's going to be.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: The church needs to be the church,
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: not for the sake of changing the world per se,
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: but for the sake of saving God's people,
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: which is going to happen through the proclamation of Christ and through
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: the administration of his ordinances.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a way we have a faith and a liturgy and an ethic that we believe,
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: confess and live by in the redemptive kingdom of Christ on earth,
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: which is the church.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: It leads to church and church leaders assuming the idea that they are endowed
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: with this mission of being the world's moral policeman.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: When, in fact,
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think we already have really good examples of what happens
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: when religious leaders assume that role.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: They crucify the guy that they were supposed to be looking out for.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of what happened with the Pharisees as they got more and more involved
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: with like political idealism and ideas of preserving power.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: It bears itself out that once you assume that role,
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: you've assumed a different function than what God had ever intended for his people
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: to live in and with.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I think a really formative text, Galatians...
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: Three or four.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: Three, I think,
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: where Paul says that when God gave the blessing to Abraham,
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: he was preaching the gospel beforehand,
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: which is to say this has always been the case.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's never been different messages.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's always been one word of promise that God's people have always been clinging
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: to from Abraham to now.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: Even Adam in one sense.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you could go back even further.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's never changed.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the point is, it's never going to change even now.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like we,
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: to quote unquote,
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: make people of God,
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: to disciple the nations,
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: to use Matthew 28's language,
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: is the same message, offering the word of promise, which leads to Christ.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: There is no other message.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think...
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: That is what's becoming sort of the pastoral job,
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: if you will,
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: is kind of discerning how to stay stubbornly convinced of
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: that despite everything else.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, I yeah, I agree, man.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: So many things could, I mean,
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: again, separate conversations that we could have podcasts in and of themselves.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, again,
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: my chief concerns in all this are the preservation of the clarity of the gospel and
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: the clarity of the church's mission,
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: which I've gotten killed, metaphorically speaking, for saying what I'm about to say.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think the mission of the church is Rightly defined is something like this.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's the right preaching of the word of God and the right administration of
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: the sacraments for the salvation of God's people.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: And people are like, well, brother, surely there's got to be more to it than that.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I really think that's it.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: it's a dead giveaway that we've got other priorities in our generation when
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: that lands on people as woefully inadequate or like woefully narrow.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, you were talking a minute ago and this thought occurred to me too.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think even a survey of church history and world history over
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: the last 2000 years illustrates what we're talking about here.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because what is it amongst other things?
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it's the only factor, but I think it is perhaps the most significant one.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that leads to what we call the dark ages?
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: so like there's a thousand years roughly from like the seventh,
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know, late sixth, seventh century to the Protestant Reformation.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's a thousand years of darkness.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is the darkness?
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the fact that the gospel is obscured, broadly speaking.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what led to that?
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: it begins really in many senses with Constantine's Rome and then increasingly over
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: the following centuries, the church weds itself and gets in bed with the state.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: To where now there's this kind of collapsing of categories.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the church becomes this governing political institution, an arm.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens?
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the doctrine that the church is built on becomes confused and is obscured from views.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's to me no coincidence that you have the rise of doctrines like purgatory
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: and transubstantiation and all these kinds of things occurring during the Dark Ages
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: in this time when the church consciously wed itself to the state.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just don't think that that's what we need to be going about doing.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you want to give the gospel away and you want to confuse the mission of
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: the church, then by all means, That's right.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a temptation for mission drift.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that term gets thrown around a lot in certain places.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I think inherent to gospel clarity is this notion of mission drift in the sense
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: of don't get off mission.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: And as we kind of like wrap that up, I think that that's what I've been...
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: Really convinced of and convicted by is don't succumb to the drift
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: of feeling this necessity or urge to talk about this, that, and the other thing.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, stay on mission.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the mission is always Jesus.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's always those words, which are so formative.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's Christ for you, Christ for sinners of whom I am chief.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and so somebody might object, and this is...
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: I know we've been going for a while and this may be my last thought
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: for this conversation anyway.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody might object to what we're saying.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's like,
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: so brothers, well,
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_00: are you just saying that a preacher should never talk about how we are to live?
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not saying that.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: But what I am saying is that all talk of how Christians ought
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: to conduct themselves has to be Clearly,
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: redundantly, unapologetically grounded in Christ for us always.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's Christ for me.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's my union with Jesus.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's my identity in Christ.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's my standing in Christ.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then from that, we can now talk about how we live in the family of God.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it's critical that we tell people you've been adopted by the Father in Jesus Christ.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: The Trinity has put his name on you in your baptism.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you are never going to be kicked out of the family.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so now let's talk about how we live in the family.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it has to be talked about in those ways.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: of course, man,
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: there are so many things that we major on in our day as to Christian living
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: that have no biblical warrant whatsoever.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's another conversation, too, because we teach.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is a common human problem.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: We teach as doctrine the traditions of men.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: Justin, thanks for your time today, man.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's been such a pleasure talking to you again.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: Where can people find you if they want to connect with you and kind of read more
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: of what you're putting out there?
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, I mean,
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: you can follow me on X,
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: Justin underscore Purdue,
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: and my last name is P-E-R-D-U-E.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like the chicken, not the school, for those who are familiar with both.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: So Justin underscore Purdue on X. I'm on Instagram too.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't post there a ton, but I am there.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: The church I pastor, Covenant Baptist Church, we have a website, covbap.org.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_00: You can find sermons there, audio, video,
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I might be getting back into podcasting in the next six to 12 months
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: and more information on that forthcoming.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure if that happens,
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: man, you and I'll be on the airwaves together and I can share that at another time.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds good, brother.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you, man.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for your time today.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me on, dude.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: Always good to talk with you.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for watching or listening to this episode of the Ministry Minded Podcast.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't yet, be sure to check out the notes to connect with Justin and his ministry.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you follow him, especially on Twitter.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: He is always giving,
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: or X I guess it is now,
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: he's always giving a lot of really encouraging posts and updates.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: And make sure if you haven't yet,
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: subscribe to this podcast right here on Substack,
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: Those subscriptions go a long way.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your support.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your prayers, your encouragement, your notes.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: Those go a long way.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: They mean a lot to me.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for that.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_01: And until then, I'll see you on the next episode.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_01: Blessings.