Latest / Ministry Minded / Torah, Freedom, and the Finished Work of Christ with R. L. Solberg

Transcript

Torah, Freedom, and the Finished Work of Christ with R. L. Solberg · Ministry Minded

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Ministry Minded Podcast,
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  SPEAKER_00: a show that seeks to marvel at the mercy of God that meets us
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  SPEAKER_00: in our messy ministries.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Pastor Brad Gray.
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  SPEAKER_00: I serve as the senior pastor at Stonington Baptist Church right here in Pax Sinus, Pennsylvania.
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  SPEAKER_00: And on today's episode, I'm I'm thrilled to have as a guest, Dr. R.L.
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  SPEAKER_00: Solberg.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dr. Solberg works for Biblical Roots Ministries.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's an apologetics ministry based out of Nashville,
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  SPEAKER_00: Tennessee,
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  SPEAKER_00: a ministry that he started and founded to help curious believers or maybe even
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  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just thrilled to have him on the show to talk about sort of his journey,
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  SPEAKER_00: the journey from where he
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  SPEAKER_00: He was to where he is now,
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  SPEAKER_00: how God led him into this ministry of driving folks to the Word of God to find truth
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  SPEAKER_00: and solace and hope and meaning and purpose,
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  SPEAKER_00: finding all those things within God's words itself and why,
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  SPEAKER_00: even though there There's a lot of confusion surrounding God's word,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially the Torah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why believers,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially Christians and those who are within the church can find a great hope
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  SPEAKER_00: and meaning in there and knowing how it is fulfilled in Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is just a great conversation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dr. Solberg and I had just had a great time.
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  SPEAKER_00: And talking about truth and meaning and all those things that go along with
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  SPEAKER_00: the faith once delivered to the saints, as it says in Jude.
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  SPEAKER_00: We talk about Hebrews.
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  SPEAKER_00: We talk about Galatians.
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  SPEAKER_00: We talk about the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.
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  SPEAKER_00: We talk about how the church should...
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  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you check out the links.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of resources that I'm going to include in this particular episode.
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  SPEAKER_00: Avail yourself of those, but make sure before
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  SPEAKER_00: Before you do that, listen or watch the whole episode, and I think you'll be glad that you did.
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  SPEAKER_00: This was just a delightful conversation.
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  SPEAKER_00: So sit back and relax as Dr.
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  SPEAKER_00: Solberg and I talk about so many different facets and various ways to understand
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  SPEAKER_00: the Christian faith,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially in regards to the Old Testament and how it is all fulfilled in Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dr. Solberg, it is so good to have you on the show.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited to talk with you, meet you and get to know you.
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  SPEAKER_00: But then also there's a ton of stuff that I want to get to.
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  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully we can cram it in the time frame that we have allotted.
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  SPEAKER_00: But by way of introduction,
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  SPEAKER_00: why don't you just introduce yourself,
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  SPEAKER_00: kind of where you are and what God has you doing currently.
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  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me on.
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  SPEAKER_01: This is great.
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  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you reaching out.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so my name's Robert Solberg.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm a professor here in the Nashville area in a small Christian college.
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  SPEAKER_01: I run a ministry called The Biblical Roots.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's a teaching and apologetic ministry.
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  SPEAKER_01: And we put out a lot of content.
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  SPEAKER_01: We deal with a lot of, we kind of deal with both sides, I would say.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of, you know, the offensive and the defensive side of the Christian faith.
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  SPEAKER_01: So defensively,
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  SPEAKER_01: we defend biblical Christianity specifically from,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, we're not in the space of science versus faith, that sort of thing.
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  SPEAKER_01: We're more
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  SPEAKER_01: Dealing with what I would call biblical apologetics,
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  SPEAKER_01: meaning fringe groups or false teachers that claim biblical authority
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  SPEAKER_01: for their doctrines, but it actually is off from mainstream Christianity.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't defend any particular denomination,
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  SPEAKER_01: but just the general Protestant view of theology of Christ
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  SPEAKER_01: and Scripture being inerrant and our ultimate authority and that sort of thing.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we deal with a lot of folks who know their Scripture well,
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  SPEAKER_01: but Are kind of, you know, putting out false doctrine.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then on the other side of the coin, we also have what I call offensive.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we do a lot of Bible studies.
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  SPEAKER_01: We just finished a Hebrews 18 part, verse by verse, apologetic.
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  SPEAKER_01: Study through the book of Hebrews, which was a beast.
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  SPEAKER_01: That book is huge and so deep.
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  SPEAKER_01: And we did one on Galatians.
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  SPEAKER_01: Next up, we're starting on Ephesians.
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  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of both sides.
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  SPEAKER_01: We try to teach.
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  SPEAKER_01: One of our goals is to raise biblical literacy in the church.
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  SPEAKER_01: The other goal is to be rooted in Scripture and in the faith and point to Christ
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  SPEAKER_01: and make sure, test teachings against what Scripture says.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we have kind of two sides to our ministry.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love that you're always bringing people back to scriptures and not just,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's great to incorporate,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: church tenets and creeds and confessions,
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  SPEAKER_00: but bringing folks back to the word always brings them back.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: How did you,
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  SPEAKER_00: has it always been something that you've been interested in or leaning towards
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  SPEAKER_00: when it comes to apologetics?
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  SPEAKER_00: Or is that something that kind of like grew and kind of gradually developed in you
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  SPEAKER_00: and on you, if I can say it that way?
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I had a I don't want to say a struggle with my faith.
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  SPEAKER_01: I just basically ignored it for late teens, early twenties.
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  SPEAKER_01: I kind of walked away from God.
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  SPEAKER_01: I didn't not believe in him, but he just had nothing to do with my life.
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  SPEAKER_01: I didn't pray.
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  SPEAKER_01: I didn't go to church.
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  SPEAKER_01: I didn't read my Bible.
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  SPEAKER_01: I didn't think about God,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: and then you get married and you have kids and you start thinking about what's life
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  SPEAKER_01: about.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I started finding my way back, but I had so many questions.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I'm kind of, you know, uh, Let me put it this way.
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  SPEAKER_01: When I read,
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  SPEAKER_01: I remember distinctly reading,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think it's Mark 9,
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  SPEAKER_01: where the man comes up to Jesus and his disciples were unable to heal his child,
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  SPEAKER_01: but Jesus did.
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  SPEAKER_01: And he said, I believe, help me with my unbelief.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I remember reading that and thinking, wow, it's okay to have doubts.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's okay to, you know, and of course, God can take anything.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so I started bringing that to God and I started really getting into that led me
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  SPEAKER_01: into apologetics.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so originally my My interest in it was in that area of science versus faith, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: Or atheism versus Christianity, those sorts of things.
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  SPEAKER_01: Kind of the big thing you think about, the big arena when you think about apologetics.
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  SPEAKER_01: But because of a personal interaction I had with a friend
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  SPEAKER_01: who had I've taken up this false teaching and was really like adamant about it.
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  SPEAKER_01: In challenging him,
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  SPEAKER_01: I found God was sending me,
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  SPEAKER_01: as I like to say it,
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  SPEAKER_01: out to this remote outpost of his kingdom that no one's ever heard of
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  SPEAKER_01: and no one thought was a big deal, including me.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, wow.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do this.
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  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about creation.
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  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, as usual, God was right and I was wrong.
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  SPEAKER_01: And he sent me somewhere where there's a big need.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so that's how we ended up doing this.
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  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a book in 2018.
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  SPEAKER_01: That began sort of this journey and ended up in us having our ministry,
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  SPEAKER_01: the Biblical Roots Ministry.
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  SPEAKER_01: So being sort of assigned to this area,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is what I call restorationist movements,
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  SPEAKER_01: people that teach that Christians are required to keep the Old Covenant movement.
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  SPEAKER_01: The Torah,
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  SPEAKER_01: they'll say, well, we,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: we need to keep the food laws,
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  SPEAKER_01: we need to keep the Torah feasts,
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  SPEAKER_01: we need to keep the weekly Sabbath,
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  SPEAKER_01: we need to keep all of those things that God gave to Israel at Sinai,
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  SPEAKER_01: and somehow they've convinced themselves.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's a growing movement that Christians today need to do that.
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  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't do that, you're walking in sin.
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  SPEAKER_01: I just had a debate on my YouTube channel with a guy that I just asked him flat out,
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  SPEAKER_01: very nice guy.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I asked him flat out, is it a sin then to eat pork?
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  SPEAKER_01: And he said, yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, so you're thinking, wow, okay, that is so far off the ranch, as they say.
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  SPEAKER_01: But this is where a lot of people are.
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  SPEAKER_01: And the thing is that a lot of people are confused about how does and how The law,
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  SPEAKER_01: the law of Moses, I'll say, because we need to be very clear on our descriptions.
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  SPEAKER_01: How does that apply to Christians today?
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's confusing.
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  SPEAKER_01: So the part of that is why we want to build up the literacy in the church,
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  SPEAKER_01: biblical literacy, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: To understand, well, how does that work?
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  SPEAKER_01: And what did Jesus fulfill?
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  SPEAKER_01: And what didn't he?
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  SPEAKER_01: And how do we determine what commands apply to us today?
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  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of how I ended up in that area.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that is really fascinating, actually.
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  SPEAKER_00: And besides just like,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: telling someone just to pick up and read the book of Hebrews,
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  SPEAKER_00: what would be like your go-to, like, how would you approach this?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: I guess what's fascinating is that this isn't like a new issue,
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  SPEAKER_00: or like this has been going on,
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  SPEAKER_00: Acts 15, this has been going on since the very inception of the church.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what do you think makes it so persistent?
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  SPEAKER_00: And how should we go about broaching that conversation, if you will?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great question.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've learned a lot of lessons trial
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  SPEAKER_01: by error.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe some things not to do.
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  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
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  SPEAKER_01: In the last eight years of dealing with this and getting deep into it.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's a bunch of different ways we could go.
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  SPEAKER_01: Let me say it this way.
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  SPEAKER_01: I like to try to be as charitable as I can.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so I'll start by saying this,
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  SPEAKER_01: that everyone who gets into this movement,
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  SPEAKER_01: and when I say everyone,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think I feel comfortable saying 99.9%,
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  SPEAKER_01: get into this movement because they're very interested In learning more
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  SPEAKER_01: about Scripture, being closer to God, they want to be obedient.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's this larger movement in Christianity today,
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  SPEAKER_01: especially in the Western world,
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  SPEAKER_01: that I've seen,
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  SPEAKER_01: I've seen studies on this,
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  SPEAKER_01: that there is a seeking for something deeper and more ancient,
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  SPEAKER_01: and something sustenance, something with sustenance, because...
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  SPEAKER_01: My theory,
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  SPEAKER_01: half of this is Rob's theory and half of it's,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, what I see out in the world.
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  SPEAKER_01: But there's a sense of,
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  SPEAKER_01: in many cases,
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  SPEAKER_01: Christianity becoming too light and fluffy and TED Talk sermons on Sundays,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, that kind of a thing, sort of a cultural Christianity.
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  SPEAKER_01: I am not, you know...
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying, in general, we see these things.
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  SPEAKER_01: We see the prosperity gospel.
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  SPEAKER_01: We see televangelists and those sorts of things that seem to cheapen it.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think people, especially the younger generation, it's very interesting, are getting...
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  SPEAKER_01: They're aware of that and it really turns them off.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so they begin looking and we've seen this big shift demographically
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  SPEAKER_01: to more liturgical denominations across,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, maybe the last 10 years across at least in the US.
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  SPEAKER_01: And people are looking for something deeper.
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, some of the people looking for something deeper Go through this sort of process.
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  SPEAKER_01: I've kind of defined this five-step process, how someone goes from curiosity to captivity.
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  SPEAKER_01: I've got an article on my blog about this.
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  SPEAKER_01: So basically what happens is they realize, whoa, Jesus is Jewish.
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  SPEAKER_01: Like it has been there the whole time,
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  SPEAKER_01: but there's this moment you have,
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  SPEAKER_01: and I've had it myself for like,
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  SPEAKER_01: wait a second,
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  SPEAKER_01: he was a rabbi and he was Jewish and he kept the law and he did all these things.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so you wanna lean into that.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so you get really interested and you start going,
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  SPEAKER_01: okay, I'm going to start like owning my own Bible study time.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to necessarily read what everyone else is doing.
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  SPEAKER_01: I want to study the Hebrew words and I want to understand how do these feasts point
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  SPEAKER_01: to Christ and what's the Jewish roots of the Christian faith
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  SPEAKER_01: because they're very real and they're very beautiful.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I always say,
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  SPEAKER_01: The more we understand about the Old Testament and the way God did things,
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  SPEAKER_01: the better we understand Christ and what he did in the gospel.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I encourage all of that.
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  SPEAKER_01: But somewhere along the way,
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  SPEAKER_01: there becomes this sort of reorientation for some people, not everybody.
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  SPEAKER_01: They'll go kind of a couple steps in.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then for me, I went, wait a second.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I need to keep this in context of what scripture says.
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  SPEAKER_01: But some people will say, hey, I should be keeping these things, shouldn't I?
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  SPEAKER_01: I think I should be keeping Shavuot and Sukkot and all these,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: the Torah feasts,
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  SPEAKER_01: and I should probably be eating biblically clean, and why don't I keep Sabbath?
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  SPEAKER_01: Why don't I rest on the seventh day?
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, those sorts of things.
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  SPEAKER_01: Very valid questions.
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  SPEAKER_01: But some people begin at that point to reorient themselves around this newfound,
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  SPEAKER_01: exciting Jewish understanding of the Christian faith.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so they begin to, this is me putting it this way, no one would ever say it that's in it.
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  SPEAKER_01: They begin to slowly but subtly,
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  SPEAKER_01: and I've seen this so many times,
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  SPEAKER_01: take their focus off of Christ and his finished work and begin to look back to Moses
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  SPEAKER_01: and the things that Moses mediated between God and Israel, his chosen people, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: So they kind of get confused about that.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then there are many teachers who will take that and begin throwing confusion
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  SPEAKER_01: on top of it, missing.
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  SPEAKER_01: Disinterpreting verses and all kinds of things to build sort of a,
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  SPEAKER_01: which honestly it becomes in some cases a very sophisticated false theology.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to get out from under it.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so we, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_01: we actually,
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  SPEAKER_01: we deal with so many people who are in, who are in these, in this world, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: The church is divided because of it.
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  SPEAKER_01: We've had pastors, I've talked to many pastors about this.
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  SPEAKER_01: We've had husbands or wives saying, oh my gosh, my spouse is into this and I don't understand.
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  SPEAKER_01: Why don't they understand?
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  SPEAKER_01: And so it becomes a very real threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not just like, oh, you know, silly guy.
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  SPEAKER_01: You don't need to do that.
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  SPEAKER_01: It becomes something where they feel like they need to legislate it
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  SPEAKER_01: on everyone else around them, on Christians.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so what we actually see,
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  SPEAKER_01: and it's really heartbreaking,
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  SPEAKER_01: is the people in these movements, which by the way, they go by different names.
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  SPEAKER_01: So it's hard to give a specific name to what this is called.
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  SPEAKER_01: You'll hear it called Hebrew Roots.
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  SPEAKER_01: You'll hear it called Torah Observant Christianity, Torah Keepers, Messianics.
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  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they'll say, which is a really problematic thing.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I just label the theology Torah-ism.
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  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's, uh,
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  SPEAKER_01: There was a period of time when I first discovered this.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we moved from Minneapolis down to Nashville.
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  SPEAKER_01: My friend up in Minneapolis started posting something.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was around Thanksgiving.
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  SPEAKER_01: But he was saying, hey, Christians, you can't be celebrating Christmas.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's a pagan holiday, blah, blah, blah.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, that's weird.
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  SPEAKER_01: We went to church together.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of leaned in and it turned out to be,
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  SPEAKER_01: as I like to say,
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  SPEAKER_01: I walked through the back of the wardrobe into this other world I never knew about.
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  SPEAKER_01: And as I was in there, I thought, oh, I know what I'm going to do.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to find the verse that's going to cut the legs out from under this
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  SPEAKER_01: because it's not right.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I did a
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  SPEAKER_01: Is thinking that it was a theological problem.
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  SPEAKER_01: So there is no one verse, and this is my first lesson that I try to share with people.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's no one verse or passage that will make them suddenly go, oh, yeah, you're right.
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  SPEAKER_01: I've talked about Acts 15 and Colossians 2 and all kinds of passages.
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  SPEAKER_01: Romans 14, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: Mark 7, 19.
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  SPEAKER_01: All these passages you think, oh, well,
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  SPEAKER_01: how do you read Acts 15 in the Jerusalem Council and come away thinking that we need
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  SPEAKER_01: to keep this?
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, apparently some people do.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's a long process,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: and it's typically measured in years,
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: not months, before someone kind of sees the light.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started approaching things differently.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm in maybe a unique situation because we have a lot of followers, a lot of viewers.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I know when someone's making a comment,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: there's probably 100 people out there dealing with that same comment going,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, how do I respond to this?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm trying to teach people.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Apologetics in this space so other people can bring those discussions
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: to their loved one, whoever they are.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I love this kind of idea from Greg Kokel about putting a pebble in someone's shoe.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not trying to change their mind in one instant,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: but you're putting something out there that's a bit of biblical truth
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: that suddenly makes their walk a little less comfortable and they have to think
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: about it.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had so many people come to me now that we've been into this for an
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: The big thing I would say is,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: if you have someone in that world,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: don't think that there's a quick theological answer.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And in many cases, actually,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: When you attack the theology, they'll dig in their heels and they're not even open to it.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've had people tell me,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I said to this one woman I was interviewing who had been in it for three years
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: and finally got out and I said, what did you think when someone said Acts 15?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And she just said, it went right past me.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I had all the answers.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even accept, I didn't think about even if that could be true.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: I just rejected it, you know?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like when you quote Romans 8.28 to someone who's going through a really bad time.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: It may be true,
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: but it's not necessarily the word that you need to hear in that particular moment.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really fascinating because there is a lot of anecdotal data,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: so to speak,
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: if I can say that,
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: regarding either the generation underneath me or even my own millennial generation
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: as they are becoming...
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say disillusioned by the broad sweep of evangelicalism.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: As you noted, I think rightly, we're searching for something substantive.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And liturgy,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: or we could say Torah observance,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: it is inherently, there is some substance there that you can sink your teeth into.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: So you understand, it is, it's attractive.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can understand that there's,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: and I think this is, I think this gets to even just human nature.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's this pull towards something sacred.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's something inherently more sacred about walking into
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: a cathedral versus walking into a mall front church that speaks to you differently.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can understand from that scenario just why there would be that magnetism there.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And again,
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I guess this brings us back to, I mean,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: I said it half jokingly,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: but It brings us back to the argument of,
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: whoever you might think wrote the book of Hebrews,
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: and we can talk about that if you want to.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it brings us back to whoever wrote Hebrews of how he approaches this
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: because he's speaking to roughly the same predicament,
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: the same issues, which I find endlessly fascinating.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: and that's probably the book to go to if you're trying to understand the connections
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: between the Old and New Testaments, the Old and New Covenants.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because that brings us the most vivid picture of the Mosaic order and the difference
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: between that and the New Order of Christ, right?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: In our Bible study,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: I kept saying,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: if I had to summarize the entire book of Hebrews down to one word,
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: it would be better.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus is the better high priest who made a better sacrifice and
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: a better sanctuary,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: who's the minister of a better covenant based on better promises, right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: These are all,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: especially chapters 7 through 10,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: it's all about the things that were ordained by God and aren't bad or evil or any of
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: that.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: No one's saying that they're useless or whatever, but they were given as temporary promises.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Signposts to point us to Christ.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he tells us that so many times.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: John 5 and Luke 24.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have these,
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: you have Jesus saying, look,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: to the Pharisees,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: even in his time while the temple was still standing,
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: he says to them, something greater than the temple is here.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he may have said that in the shadow of the actual temple, which would be astounding.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: But you have this idea where he's telling them, look,
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: at John 5,
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: he says, look,
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: you search the scriptures by which,
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: at that time,
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: he would have meant the Torah and the writings and the prophets,
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: the Old Testament, as the Jewish calls it, the Tanakh.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: He says you search that because you think that in those scriptures you have life,
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: but it is they that talk about me or that point you to me.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And yet you refuse to come to me that you would have life.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so you look at that at the time when Jesus said that and you think to yourself,
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: if Jesus himself can talk about this sort of hierarchy, he didn't say it was bad.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: He never said scripture was bad.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: He never taught against Moses or against the law or any of that,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: but he did understand the direction that scripture was pointing.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he even says, Moses wrote about me.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: How will you understand?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Deuteronomy 18.15,
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: God says through Moses,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: I will raise up a prophet from among you, and to him you must listen, Moses says.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we know in hindsight, he was talking about Christ at the time.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: They would have just thought, okay, well, that's probably the Messiah figure, right?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: But so we have this idea of Moses pointing to God, listen to him or to Jesus, listen to him.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Then we have this idea of Jesus coming out of the water,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: or you could even look at the Mount of Transfiguration and God saying,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: this is my son, listen to him.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's saying, listen to Jesus.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we know the direction that that scripture is pointing.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, follow me.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: So anything that takes us away from Christ is the central figure of our faith as
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: the whole point of the Bible, frankly.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that's dangerous, I think, and it risks becoming, how do they say that?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sin is making a good thing the ultimate thing,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: or idolatry is making a good thing into the ultimate thing.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's even some folks I would say are making Moses or even the Torah
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: an idol above Christ, and that's really scary.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good point, especially from the standpoint that
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll say it this way.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews, the writer, well, Who do you think wrote Hebrews?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just get that out of the way.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was Apollos.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: While I did my study,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: which took me two years to get through the whole book,
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: and by the way,
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: it's available for free on our YouTube channel, but I changed my mind.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I'm of the position, and I'm not going to, this is just Rob's speculation.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to go on a limb.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't scripture.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I believe that it was a scribe writing down the teachings of the Apostle Paul.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think that explains why the ideas are so Pauline,
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: but the text is much different than he would write.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: But there are a few things when I was going through,
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: I thought,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: oh my gosh,
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Paul talks about this over here,
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: or this is the same type of way that Paul builds an argument.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that's where I land.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think Paul was giving a verbal address,
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: or maybe a series of verbal addresses,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: and later a scribe thought, this is so good, I have to write this down.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like that.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I lean towards the Apollos model, but yeah, I'm not going to fall on the sword for that.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless,
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think what's so fascinating about this,
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: essentially it's like, you know, a 13-part sermon.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the writer is giving is that he shows how we could say Christ is superior,
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: your word better.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: But he does so without saying like we just need
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: to just he doesn't do he doesn't spit on the Torah.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't he doesn't outright dismiss it as if it's like just throw out the baby
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: with the bathwater, so to speak.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: But he's showing that.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: How it was limited.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that is what is so fascinating is that he brings that tension.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: We don't just chuck it in the garbage,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: but we also understand that this can't bring you all the way To
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: where Christ can bring you,
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: which is so,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: as we've talked about a little bit,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: it's freeing, it's fulfilling, but it just surges, especially me as a pastor.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: I preached through Hebrews a couple of years ago, and I was just continuously moved.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: My silly analogy was I would just imagine the writer of Hebrews,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: what he's essentially doing is he's going into someone's house,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: their living room, and they have all these trinkets on.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: On a mantelpiece, and he's just kind of flicking them off.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: It seems rude,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: but he's like,
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: there's something so much better than this little trinket, Moses,
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: angels, Joshua, all of these things in which that you're just like clinging to.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's something that is so much more fulfilling and gratifying,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: and it just surges you with hope and grace and peace.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I love, I just love the book of Hebrews.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's such an incredible text of scripture.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, me too.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you're right.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: He's not saying it's bad.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's kind of saying this is what it meant.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is what it pointed to.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: he talks about, well,
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: those were mere mortal priests who had to continually,
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: they died and new priests had to be appointed and they had to continually do
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: the sacrifices.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: And Christ has put an end to all that.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: He is the end as Romans, what is that, 7, 6?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember which one.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: 10-4, actually, I think it is, where Christ is the end of the law.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: The end of the law, the purpose, the point of the law.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And specifically, I'm seeing that as the law of Moses because obviously God's moral law.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is independent of Mount Sinai and that covenant.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: But the idea there that it all pointed to Jesus is what we always come back to.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hebrews comes back to that.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Galatians is another incredible book where Paul is just heated about this.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And here's an interesting thing, too, if you think about it this way.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is what occurred to me when I wrote a Bible study on that,
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: a book called The Law, the Christ, the Promise.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what occurred to me was, okay,
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Paul's dealing with what we would call today Judaizers,
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: who were Jewish believers,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: who thought that Gentiles needed to convert to Judaism and to follow
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: the Jewish Messiah.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you look at that, and if you try to just immerse yourself in that first century culture...
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: That makes a lot of sense.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like they weren't being dumb.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: They were thinking to themselves, well, wait a second.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Gentiles have always had to come into the covenant in a certain way.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's a conversion process, the proselytes and all that.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so it makes sense.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is our Jewish community.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Fulfillment of our scriptures and here's our Messiah.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Gentiles are welcomed in,
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: but hey, you guys are gonna have to keep some of the house rules, right?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: So to me, it's defensible that they would take that position.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now it wasn't the right position as Paul tells us,
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: but I can understand why because at that time,
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: like think about when Paul wrote Galatians, I believe it was around the year 48.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was even before the Jerusalem council, but that doesn't matter.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: It would be within five or six years of that.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: At that point, there was no New Testament.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: All they had was the Old Testament and eyewitness accounts of Christ and the way
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: the Holy Spirit was moving through these communities, right?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so they were raised Jewish,
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: came to faith in their Messiah,
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: didn't have a new covenant to work things out, and they came to those conclusions.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, understandable.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, fast forward 2,000 years to today,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: and everybody in these movements I'm talking about,
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hebrew roots or whatever you want to call it, they are all Gentiles.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: So they weren't raised Jewish.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know anyone that's in that movement that would be a Jewish person.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've never met one.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: They were raised Gentile.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: They were raised in the church.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody comes from Islam to Hebrew roots, right?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or from some other religion.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hebrew roots is a weird sort of sidecar of traditional Christianity.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've got Gentiles who were raised in the church who have had a New Testament.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: For 2000 years that the church has wrestled with and unpacked and tried
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: to understand, they've got all of that.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: And yet still they come to the same conclusions that the first century Judaizers did.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, it's far less defensible.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: For a person today to come to that position, right?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because really what they're saying,
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: and they'll actually say this out loud,
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: they are saying that they have discovered something that nobody,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: no Christian,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: no pastor,
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: no theologian,
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: nobody has ever discovered for the last 2,000 years, and they've realized it.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so the hubris to make that statement,
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: especially as I've gotten deeper into academia,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: I To think that I've discovered something
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: that all these brilliant minds never noticed on its face is a tall order.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to say it's impossible because, yeah,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: God might reveal something to somebody,
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: but there's just that sort of approach that they take to Scripture that just isn't,
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: to me, it's not very sound in how they approach it, right?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and my ears perk up when you use that language because it makes me think
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: of not only is this leading people astray into,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: we could say a road definitely of law,
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: it's a road of of constriction,
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: and it's not very freeing,
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: but also it can veer into Gnosticism,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: which is what you're referring to,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: this idea of further enlightenment that actually leads to something I did
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: a sermon series on 1 John,
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: and I was so fascinated by just even the history to 1 John, in the sense that
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: All of this is kind of like precipitating this letter,
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: these notions of higher knowledge,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: higher enlightenment,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: and further sort of experiencing the Son of God through all of these other things.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: It can veer.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with that assessment.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's something appealing to that.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is why when people think of quote-unquote prophecy conferences
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: that maybe you grew up with,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: you always think of them in terms of like,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: let's go to Daniel and Revelation,
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: let's pull back the curtain on what's going to happen in the end times.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those will always get more views than just like, hey, let's talk about Sola Fide again.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think we're...
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're naturally inclined to like, I want to see behind the curtain, you know?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want to see behind the scenes.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see what God's up to.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a natural human curiosity.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: And there's so much we don't know that we have a lot of questions.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I understand that.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's understandable.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, we need to keep that in context, you know?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Context and then also remembering...
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is both an apologetics thing,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: it's an eschatological thing, and I think it's a local church thing.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: That when Jesus is,
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: when he's about to ascend,
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: he tells his apostles, like,
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: the very, like,
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: succinct version of their mission,
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: which was to be his witnesses,
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: which was not to, like,
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: break out their timelines and cross-reference all of the red lines
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: to make sure they can understand who the Antichrist is.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: To Christ,
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: which is essentially exactly what he witnessed to himself throughout
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: the gospel ministries,
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: which is why it culminates in my, you know, my favorite chapter, Luke 24.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: All of this concerns me.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: He just like pulls, he pulls the cap.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: The rabbit out of the hat.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: This has been the thing all along.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've been kind of hinting at it.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been alluding to it.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: John 5, John 8.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here it is to these two unsuspecting disciples.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is what it's all about.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the convergence of...
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've often said that,
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: to understand scriptures and now we can,
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know, talk about biblical theology, which is, I just love that topic.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I've often said that understanding scripture is understanding it almost like in
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: the shape of an hourglass.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Where it all converges in Christ and then it expands again
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: because now we understand like there's a huge movement called
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: the church that's born out of this point of convergence on the cross.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I always find that really fascinating to understand the Bible that way
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: that it all brings you to that point and then it expands from that point.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right, exactly.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's what my thesis was about.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: My dissertation was very much about that.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't use that word hourglass, but it is very much a narrowing.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: You see the first,
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: 12 chapters of Genesis,
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: and then all of a sudden, why are we only talking about Abraham?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're talking about his descendants, and we're really only talking about Israel.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then it,
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: you have the prophets,
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: and then you have Jesus even saying, Salvation is from the Jews.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a whole point where you go back to the garden in Genesis 3.15
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: and God says, I'm gonna send somebody to crush the head of the serpent.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's been sin in my world.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's fallen,
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: it's broken,
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: but already,
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: even before he kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden,
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: he says, I'm starting a plan of redemption.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna bring everything back the way it was intended to be, right?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so it becomes this long Process of the promise through Abraham,
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: which is really interesting.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love this.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think of it like if you're a science nerd,
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: it's like a black hole where you suddenly come out the other end in
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: a totally different area.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because you look at Genesis 12.3,
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And part of the promise that,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: there's a number of promises given to Abraham,
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: but one of them is that in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: So all of the families or tribes,
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: that word there, mishpahot, is about familial relationships, right?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Not about,
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: it's not about Hey,
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Abraham,
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: only your descendants will be blessed,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: but all the families of the earth will be blessed.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so you go, wow, that's really cool.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like God was already thinking about Gentiles even
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: before he had created what you would call Israel or the Jews.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: But then you fast forward to Galatians 3.8 and Paul says that scripture preached
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: the gospel beforehand to Abraham, that in you all the nations will be blessed.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, whoa,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: when God told Abraham, He was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ way back then.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: So and then if you follow that thread all the way through,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: then like you said, you get to Christ.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then as as the prophets talked about,
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know, my my my teachings will go out from Jerusalem.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: The law will go out from Jerusalem, the Torah.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, you're like, wait a second.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: In Acts 2,
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: when you have the Pentecost, right,
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: and the Holy Spirit falls,
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: and there's Jews from every nation under the sun,
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: and they all become believers,
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: and then they all disperse and go back to their nations where they came from
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: and bring the And so you see this widening of the mission of Christ,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: as you said in Acts 1,
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: he talks about you will be by witnesses,
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: but then, you know, Matthew 28, go make disciples of all nations.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you see this beautiful, global,
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: universal,
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: not in terms of universalism,
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: right, but this universal call for everyone's invited to become disciples.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a part of God's new covenant people.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think, to me,
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: that's amazing to look at that big arc,
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: if you want to call it a storyline, of how that happened.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's where we are right now.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there's still more to happen,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: which is exciting, like you're talking about some of this eschatology.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Christ is coming back.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: And not everything that was prophesied has been fulfilled yet, right?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's going to come back, like he said.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have this...
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Big storyline,
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: this big picture that we're invited into through faith in Christ,
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: which is amazing to me.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: I get excited about that.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this kind of stuff really excites me because, you know, I'm a pastor's kid.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in church.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was always hearing sermons.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's just because I was a young and dumb kid.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you can hear these stories that you're so familiar with and you can kind
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: of keep them in little sort of like segmented cubbies where all
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: of these figures are.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: End up becoming like maybe mere archetypes instead of actual humans.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then I don't know why it seems so elementary,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: but to understand all of these human beings were taking apart.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who sort of tapped into it, but
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think Luke 24 is sort of like this hinge where it's sort of like,
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know, spoiler alert, Darth Vader reveals he's Luke Skywalker's dad.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Once that occurs,
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: you can't watch anything afterwards in the same way,
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: and you can't watch anything before in the same way.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: It has to pivot on that.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: It has to change.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everything changes in that moment.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think the same sort of thing happens in Luke 24 when,
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: like, you alluded to John 5, but Jesus...
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: He pulls out all of the stops,
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: and he says, this is everything that the Bible has been leading up to.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: All of the law and the prophets, they concern me, as he ends up saying in Luke 24, 44.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: All the law and the prophets, they deal with the Christ who must suffer.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: From that vantage point then, now you're incorporated, you're brought into this story too.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what a life-giving message that is.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's the life.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about substance.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is the substance that I think actually feeds faith,
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: that feeds our souls, if I can say it that way.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's a sense of...
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a story, but it's a story about reality.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: This really happened.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I love about the Christian faith that's unique
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: from any other faith is that we have historical events and things
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: that have happened.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: That are pivotal to our faith.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: So God isn't some abstract deity concept of the universe out there.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: God is someone who took on flesh,
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: who actually was killed under Pontius Pilate in first century Judea.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we have these tactile...
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Historical events that ground our faith.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can look at that and you say, wow, that's amazing.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like reading an old story about whatever, you know, some old war or something.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you seem distant from it.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: But there are times then as you dig into the text where you start going, wait, this is my story.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: I remember distinctly reading John 17, the high priestly prayer.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a line in there where Jesus says,
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: I pray for all of these, you know, the apostles and disciples that are around him.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, for those who will believe because of them.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: And in my mind, I thought, that's an unbroken line directly to me.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: That someone told someone who told someone who told someone,
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: et cetera, down through almost 20 centuries.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: And someone told me.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's the unbroken story of the gospel.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I am only one of several billion people.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not like I'm special,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: but we're all grafted into that story when we come to faith and to think
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: to ourselves, oh,
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: this isn't just,
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: like my dad would say,
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: my birth father was an atheist and we would have really good conversations,
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: but he would always say,
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: whatever it takes to,
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: get through the night, you know, Christianity is a crutch kind of thing, you know?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say, dad, if it's real, It keeps me up at night.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm praying for people.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm serving.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's all these things that when you understand how real Christ is
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: and how sinful we are and how holy God is and Jesus bridged that,
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: there's this overwhelming sense of gratitude and belonging that makes you want
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: to lean into life, not hide under the covers.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it actually,
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: as Jesus says,
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: it actually makes you want to live,
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: quote, and live abundantly because it's the life that he gives, right?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that I try to,
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: as I'm getting older,
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: late 50s now,
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm starting to learn and maybe be a little bit less of a knucklehead,
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm starting to understand that,
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: you think— You think,
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: or I used to think,
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just use my own self,
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: that God was great,
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: but submitting totally to God is difficult,
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm not sure,
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: and you know, because I want things, I kind of know how things are supposed to go.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: I would think that without recognizing what I was doing, right?
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I'm learning to stay more submitted to what He wants.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: I remember reading this book called...
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: an academic-minded and intellectual, and so I read lots of those types of books.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so this book was more experiential.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I really liked that, and I knew that I needed that.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: But he says something in that book that I was offended by.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he talked about, look, God doesn't need your ideas.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: God doesn't need you to come up with stuff to do.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: He said,
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: what you need to do is pray for God to show you where he's already working in
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: the world, and then you go there and help him.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: You don't come up with, and I was so offended by that because I thought, no, I have plans.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: I have dreams and visions, you know what I mean?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: And over time, probably over the course of about a year, I started to realize, what am I doing?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Am I fighting against God when I'm trying to do apologetic ministry?
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's not right.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I started just kind of laying that down and saying, God, show me and not pushing so hard.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: My personality is that way.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've always kind of been driven and entrepreneurial and wanting to create things and do things.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: But when you pause, God's like, okay, thank you.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm going to show you something.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: As I mentioned earlier,
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to show you something over here that's
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: a remote outpost you never would have saw on your own.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm bringing you there because I'm doing things that you can't even see right now.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you lean in and you learn to trust that process day to day,
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: like wake up in the morning, Lord, what do you have for me today?
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a whole different way of living your life.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if we could dovetail that back to the Torah keeping world,
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: I would say it this way because I also am a list guy.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's something comfortable about saying,
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: here's the things I need to do in order to be considered righteous in God's eyes.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: Check, check, check, check the list, right?
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's a whole different thing to say, just lean into God every morning and ask him.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: Whoa, that's kind of scary.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: Where's the boundaries?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: How do I know if I did anything?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: What's my key metric on whether I obey God today?
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a concrete list, but what it is is a relationship.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing like that.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's part of what I see when I see people getting into the law keeping,
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: the old covenant rituals and things.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: It breaks my heart because I feel like they're losing the ability to have that relationship.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you think about it, how did God's people get into the Sinai covenant?
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: They were born into it.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you're one of the 12 tribes of Israel, you were born into the covenant.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: No one asked you if you believed.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a male,
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: you're circumcised at eight days and you're assumed that you have
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: to do all these feasts and all this stuff.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get into the new covenant?
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Faith in Christ.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's the only requirement.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: So
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: The nature of the covenants are so dramatically different that if someone,
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: as Paul says,
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: wants to put themselves back into slavery,
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: this is the language he uses in Galatians 5,
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: do you not know what the law says, he asks?
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's this sense of turning your back on freedom.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now,
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have to add this all the time because a lot of folks will accuse me of saying,
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: oh, we can murder and commit adultery now?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the freedom to sin, it's the freedom from sin.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's the freedom to obey God fully, right?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what's so beautiful and also so scary at times.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's kind of like what Mr.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: Beaver says in the Chronicles of Narnia about the lion Aslan,
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: that he isn't safe, but he's good.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of like, you know, that's kind of like God's grace.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't necessarily safe.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not controlled by what we want to control it by.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: We can't put our measuring sticks to it.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: We can't put our controls on it.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it is good because it brings about God's good purposes.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a really helpful way.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say,
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: because we've kind of been,
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: we've thrown around some scriptures already,
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: and you've used the term biblical literacy,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: and that's kind of a mainstay, perhaps, of your biblical roots ministries.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say or how would you explain biblical literacy and
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: where would you say that is most lacking when it comes to maybe students
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: or maybe local church ministry or however you're observing it?
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you see that and where can we,
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: both as teachers and maybe even pastors,
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: where can we sort of lean into that and grow more biblically literate believers?
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the exciting part for me because biblical literacy comes from leaning
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: into God's word.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the biggest thing I would say that gets missed is context.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so you see this in all different ways.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: You see people quoting passages from scripture that when you read it in context,
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I hate to burst people's bubbles, right?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: But like Jeremiah 29, 11, right?
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: You have plans for me and prosper.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, well,
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: that was a letter to the nation of Israel when they were in exile and it had
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: a specific meaning.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a universal principle?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: Many times there is, right?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the key is to first understand what's being written in context.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: And here's what I mean by that.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: I see it as a concentric rings, right?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: You have the immediate context, right?
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: whatever,
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: Paul's talking to the believers in this area called Galatia or in Ephesus
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: or whatever it might be.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you say, oh,
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: there's a first century man,
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Saul of Tarsus,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: Paul, who wrote a letter to a church and he's trying to do something.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: In scholarly terms, you say, what's the occasion for the letter?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning what caused it to be written?
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: What was it trying to do?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at it from a first century perspective,
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: you say, okay, Paul was trying to do this.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times what you have to do,
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: and it's fun if you like detective stuff, you go, why would Paul say that?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe someone was arguing the opposite.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like listening to one side of a phone call.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: You just get to hear Paul's side.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so you start to put together ideas about why might he have said that?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: What's he talking about?
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you get this immediate context, which would be the passage and the book of the Bible.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: And even, you know, you could look at it in terms of Pauline context.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: What does Paul take?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we need to do this to the bigger picture is the entire body of Scripture.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so we start to see the flow.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I always hesitate to call it a narrative because people might think
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: that I'm saying it's false, but it's not.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: But there is a narrative or a story quality to how the Bible unfolds
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: and understanding where are we in the story?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: For example, Ephesians.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's see.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: We've already had creation.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: No one actually goes all the way back,
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm just kind I'm making this point of where we fall in the process.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: But we've had creation.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: We've had Abraham called.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've had, you know, Israel was created as a nation.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: They went into slavery.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: We had Mount Sinai.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: The kingdom broke in half, or not in half, but in two.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: The prophets came and tried to call them back.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: God said, no, you broke the covenant.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sending you the new covenant.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: The new covenant happened with Christ.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: Christ converted Paul directly on the road to Damascus,
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: and now you have Paul as the appointed apostle of the Gentiles.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, now let's look at that picture of what Ephesians is about.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so you start to see a bigger and deeper understanding of what Paul's talking
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: about, who he's arguing against.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the first century, you've got several Jewish sects.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's not monolithic.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: You've got the Essenes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so you see all this stuff.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: You've got Gentiles.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: You've got all this stuff going on.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: The more you understand and fill in that knowledge,
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: The more you're going to get the idea of Ephesians.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: And now if you're aware of that big, full,
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: sweeping arc,
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: then when someone comes to you and says,
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: hey, did you know you're supposed to keep the food laws?
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: You now have a basis to go, well, that doesn't fit my understanding of scripture.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why would you say that?
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about it.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so then you can start to see the food laws,
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: not just in the Leviticus 11,
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: God said this, so we have to do it way, but okay, what purpose?
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Does the Bible tell us why they were given?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it actually does tell us why they were given in Leviticus 20.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because Israel needed to be set apart from the nations.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: They were holy to God.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted them separate from the nations.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so God gives them food laws that no one else gets.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then you say to yourself, okay, well, wait a second.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: If we're in Christ today, Why did the Jews need to be separated from the Gentiles?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that gone?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't Paul say there is no Jew or Gentile, we're all one in Christ?
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't he say Jesus broke down the wall of hostility and made one new man?
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you start to say, I can understand now.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, why the food laws don't apply to us today as a holiness command, right?
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if someone wants to eat biblically clean, they're certainly welcome to.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's never been forbidden.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: But the purpose,
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: when we understand biblically the purpose of some of those laws,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: it becomes very easy to,
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: not easy,
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: but it comes easier to put them in perspective,
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: which for my apologetic world helps me When people understand and they don't fall
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: for these kind of false teachings, right?
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's the old principle.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: The better you understand the genuine article, the easier it is to spot a counterfeit.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so when something doesn't sit right with you, this is a great opportunity.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: We just lean into scripture and see what it says, you know?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that's what biblical literacy means.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: It means understanding the big picture.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, where do we fall short?
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think some of it,
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: not a broad sweeping statement because every church is different
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: and many are wonderful, but there are a number of Mm-hmm.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: You'll hear the story of Noah.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: You'll hear the story of Jonah.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: You'll hear some of the big ones.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: But to actually get in,
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I would ever do it,
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: and I doubt you've ever done it, but who would preach through Leviticus?
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's a heavy, weird book of strange laws to preach through.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: But at least understanding it is good.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say more emphasis on the Old Testament in how it points to Christ.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: Mm hmm.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you think, well,
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: you kind of answered,
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: but like, what do you think is a driver behind biblical illiteracy?
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because like growing up, I grew up in church.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up under pretty expository preaching.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: And yet even still,
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think there was ways in which I could,
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: I would understand the Bible through like almost like episodes or like archetypes,
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: as I said.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, there wasn't anything that really Brought them together until later in my life.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I always find that really fascinating because I'm a large proponent,
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: of course, of like preaching expositionally.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm in the midst of a,
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: maybe for my folks overlong,
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: but a very long sermon series through the book of Exodus.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what is so fascinating is like keeping all of that in order
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: and not just jumping here and there and yon.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Is, I think, a big help.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: But where do you think some of this biblical illiteracy kind of stems from?
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I do believe there's a maturity process, a sanctification process we all go through.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're younger, you tend to go, where am I in this?
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: And as we all do, right?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, oh, those dumb Pharisees.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: I knew better than that.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then later when you get older and you're thinking, oh, I'm the Pharisee.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the one holding on to this tradition that I shouldn't be, you know, whatever it might be.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: So part of it is maturity and that's understandable.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Part of it is exposure, right?
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember the first time I did the read through a Bible in a year.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh, this will be this will be great.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: And some days it was just a slog.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's three or four chapters.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the program I was on was some New Testament, some Old Testament.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, it's mostly Old Testament because that's three quarters of our Bible.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so you get through these long.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh,
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: why would they have all these numbers in the Book of Numbers about,
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know, the census and this tribe and this many.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: When you do that, though,
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: when you look at it and you kind of go through it,
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of considered it, it's like flying at 20,000 feet over the land.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're kind of going fast.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're getting the big picture, the big shapes of how things work out.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: Doing that even once is huge because it gives you some perspective about there's
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of stuff in here.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's this weird,
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: heavy book of Ecclesiastes and there's these beautiful Psalms,
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: but there's also these Horrible Psalms.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is that okay to say to God?
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you are going through it and spending time in it over time,
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: you It exposes you to more things,
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: and I think then you start to look for deeper things.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: this is the cool part,
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: if you go back the next year and read through the Bible again,
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: you now have already sketched out the basic shapes,
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: and now you're reading stuff with a little bit more information,
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: with a little bit more context,
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: and you read through it again, and then you keep doing that.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: If we stay in the Word, it changes us.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm still finding things in the Bible where I go, how did I never see that before?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so the Bible is it's multilayered.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the more time we spend in it, the better we are.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: But if someone really says, you know what, I want to be biblically literate.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: Number one,
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: you have to be I believe you need to be attending a church
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: that does exposit scripture.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's important thing.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: You need a pastor.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh, to,
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: to lead you through those things,
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: because if you just kind of go on your own,
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: you'll start thinking whatever you want to think.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so study Bibles are very helpful in that way.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but just spending time in the word,
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: even if it's five minutes a day,
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: I always tell people start with a one minute prayer and a five minute Bible reading
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: and make yourself do it every morning.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: Cause that feels manageable.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: And before you know it,
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: it's going to be 30 minutes of reading and And 10 minutes of prayer
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: because you start getting in this role and God is like,
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: you start to develop this relationship.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: He illuminates scripture.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe we can understand scripture outside of the Holy Spirit.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: So he illuminates scripture for us and then he gives us that hunger and
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: then we go back to the next day and it kind of piles up, right?
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's cumulative over time.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so you just got people that are baby Christians and they're just learning and that's okay.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: We all start there.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: But what I love is like I was raised sort of, I would say, lukewarm Lutheran, right?
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning Christian.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't a passion in our house, it's just what you did, right?
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so you go there and I would always find myself going, why?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: Why are we doing this?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't get it, you know?
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: When I got older,
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: I started to really understand why there are some liturgical things that we do.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: What does the communion really mean and what's it about?
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: Why would we do that so much?
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: Can't we just do it once like baptism and be done with it?
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of that's just a process of discovery,
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: but what I think is amazing is just the way that it impacts your life
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: and your outlook on everything.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: The more you understand this sort of eternal perspective that God gives us in his word.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of reminds me of the fact that growing up,
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: we always joked about having Sunday school answers.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the Sunday school answer to every question was either Jesus or the Bible.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what's kind of ironic and funny,
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: and also now as I'm older,
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: it's like, actually, yeah, it really is just
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus and the Bible.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: Those weren't far off
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: from the truth.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was Chad Bird that told me,
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: he said,
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: you can go through the Old Testament and essentially write the name of Jesus at
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: the top of every page because he's in there somewhere.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's a connection to him.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: His book called The Christ Key is amazing.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: For anyone that's looking for those connections, how does the Old Testament point to Jesus?
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: I would recommend that book by Chad Bird.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, highly recommend Christ Key.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: Shout out to Chad.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's a wonderful, wonderful scholar at 1517.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: That book is quite exquisite.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Dr. Solberg, I don't want to take up too much of your time.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for your time you've already given.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: Where can folks find you?
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where can folks interact with either your writings or your apologetics and ministries?
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what are some things that you're just really excited about sharing in the months to come?
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, good questions.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: So thebiblicalroots.org, thebiblicalroots.org is our ministry website.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we're a nonprofit.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: All the money we get in, we put right into the producing of content.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: We put out books.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: We've got five books out.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a blog with a couple hundred articles.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a YouTube channel with over 500 videos.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of what we're doing is getting the content out there in ways
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: that People want to consume it because I don't like doing videos, I'll be honest.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: I love writing.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: If I could, I'd be the guy in the little cottage in the mountains writing books all year long.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not how the world works.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: And also God knows I don't need to be a hermit.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: I need to be forced into some of these things.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, yeah,
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: if you go to thebiblicalroots.org, you can find all that stuff I just mentioned.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: Our books, our YouTube channel, we've got a podcast.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: My blog articles are all All available from that URL.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we are doing a few things, which I'm excited about as a ministry.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: One of them is,
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think I mentioned,
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: we're starting in on a Bible study of Ephesians, which is great.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, okay,
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: after the 13 thick chapters of Hebrews,
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go to Ephesians, and that'll be a nice little six-chapter short book.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: Nice light reading.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then you read one sentence, and you're like, oh.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: Paul is so deep here.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's exciting to go and unpack it, but it's also, it's like super concentrated theology.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really excited about that.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: And what I do to prepare for these,
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: I spend at least a month every morning in my In my reading time,
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: I read through the whole book of Ephesians and I'm reading through it
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: in different translations and just trying,
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_01: because the more you read it, the more things pop out to you, you know?
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a weird pattern.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why does he keep doing this?
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then reading,
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I've got a lot of commentaries that I'll read too to kind of get an idea.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: What are other people seeing here?
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that's fun for me.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: I like nerding out on that.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a number of videos coming out on different topics that people are super interested.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: We try to really like,
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: We've got this guy who's fairly popular down in Florida teaching essentially
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: The second century heresies of adoptionism and modalism.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, almost down to the letter that Jesus is an attribute of God.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what?
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, the stuff is out there.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we have some of that.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see, I got my list here.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing a teaching on what does Paul mean in Ephesians 2 on the Commonwealth of Israel.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing a study on Acts 10.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing a study on the holiness of God, which is so important.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just going through R.C.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sproul's great teaching on that to understand,
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_01: because one of the things I've noticed in some of my debates is the things
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: that people say.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: Reveal sort of their thoughts or their presuppositions about God
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: without saying this is about God.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned before,
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: this guy said in our recent debate,
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: it's on our YouTube channel under the live videos, it was a live stream.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, I do believe eating pork is sin, he said.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_01: But then he quickly added,
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: but I also think it's a sin to walk around with your shoes untied
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_01: because you could hurt yourself.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I just went...
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: To me, what struck me about this,
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_01: and again,
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: he's a really nice guy,
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: he's very friendly,
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: and he's an intelligent guy,
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: but it struck me,
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: if you're going to downplay sin,
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_01: you have an anemic understanding of the holiness of God.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: How completely holy and perfect he is.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: And also the depravity of man,
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: like how sinful we wake up in the morning and we're sinning almost
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: before we're awake and just not be not doing the things that We should do or doing
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_01: the things we shouldn't do kind of goes both ways, right?
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you start to lose track of how bad sin is and how good God is,
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: it's easy to let things slip in.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: So half the things I do,
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_01: like this Holiness of God series that we're gonna have, it's for my own self too.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_01: Let's remind me,
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: I wanna remind myself of how amazing God is and what scripture says about him
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_01: and how do we relate to him?
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because all of that, Just makes the gospel even more amazing, right?
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why would he leave heaven and come down here and take on flesh, right?
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: And humble himself to the point of a servant, even to the point of death.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why would a holy God do that for a sinful people?
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that just blows my mind all over again.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that's some of the stuff we have.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_01: I also have my dissertation is coming out as a book and we're going
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_01: to be announcing some of that later.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: When we have specific details that we can share publicly.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: so my book is coming out,
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: which is talking about sort of what I call the unexpected church in
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: the first century.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: Why did a Jewish movement following a Jewish Messiah who was promised in
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: the Jewish scriptures and arose out of a Jewish community?
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: How did that become Gentile so quickly in history?
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so we look at that,
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: we take a theological look at that,
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: but there's also some discussion about the historical aspects,
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_01: especially of the destruction of the temple.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so interesting when you start to kind of put all those pieces together,
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: thinking about,
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: wait a second, what did Paul say about how the church should be structured?
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_01: While the temple was still standing, did he tell us we need Levites and priests?
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: He said we're going to have elders and deacons, right?
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_01: So why wouldn't he do that?
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't he...
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: Carry forward the structure, the hierarchy of the old covenant order, right?
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: Where's the commands in the New Testament?
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Jesus said the temple is going to be destroyed.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to tell you some things we can do
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: to accommodate our Christian walking out of our faith in Christ without a temple.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: No one ever says that.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't they prepare believers for life without a temple?
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because we have our temple and we are the temple if we're in Christ, right?
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_01: So some of the theology we understand becomes concrete when you look at it against
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: the historical timeline.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that's kind of what that book's about.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm excited.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully we'll announce something here in the next month or so.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_00: Incredible.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we could talk for ages, but thank you.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Solberg.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_00: This was wonderful.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_00: I had such a joy and I already know that I'm going to be asking to have you
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: on again just because this was so much fun.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much again for your time.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my pleasure.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for Dr. Solberg for joining me on the Ministry Minded podcast today.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you enjoyed this conversation.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you connect with him.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Navigate into the links below.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Check those out.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Check out those resources.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Connect with Dr. Solberg and I think you'll be very happy.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for doing that.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate your encouragement, your notes of support, and your prayers.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And until then, I'll see you on the next episode.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Blessings.