Latest / CrossPolitic Show / Holiness In The Trenches
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- Hey y'all welcome to Cospal Tick. It's our last show with Knox in the studio. At least for a while. Before you move down to Arizona. He asked me to coffee. For me. I am ready. I'm ready for one of two. I was in Sharon. Ha ha ha. Keep that past. Knox has moved his family down to go work for David Reese and all the companies and stuff that he's got going on down there. Correct. And I'm a Reese fund. Now the only thing for the Reese fund. So you're working for the Reese fund. Now the only requirement I have for you is you got to make sure your kids have a pool, man. Ha ha ha. That's it. That's it. Thanks, Gabe. There's a hundred degrees out there. Thanks for helping. Thank God. Yeah. That's it. That's it. All the kids and I remember Mr. Rinshade. Kids are listening. They're like, they're like, yeah, DJs like, yeah. Mr. Gabe said we have to have a pool. Yeah. You can go live with Mr. Gabe in his pool. He got a pool. You can go live with him in his pool. I don't know. Like in Arizona, like, does not water just like sort of like sit there at like 90 degrees? Well, here's a deal. And people have actually told me that you would think it's like it's like you're getting like, you know, slow cooked. Yeah. I'm not I feel like that's like a crock pot. No, many, many folks have said that you would think that's the case. But when you get in the pool, it's actually cold, a cool. And then when you get out, you're freezing. Yeah. You would think that they heat would like dry you out. I've heard this from multiple people. I want to test it out myself. I don't know. Well, because it's dry air. Yeah. That doesn't. It's hot. No, if it's humid, you'd get out. You'd be hot. Have you seen it? It's like 116 degrees. 120 degrees. I lived in New Mexico. It's got similar air, similar environment. Not as hot. But you get out of pulling the tree. It's dry. It's true. It's like swamp cooler. I don't know. Is this swamp cooler effect? We're going to find out. You go. Whatever. Whatever. What are we calling out? Hey, breathe. Google that. Figure it out. Hey, guys. We've been working on 10 shots of sanity for the year. Yes. We have five scented dogs out. Six. We definitely have six. We have six. Yes. OK, we're on our seventh. OK, let me refresh you for you. Come on, get out. The civil war and the pro-life movement was the first one. Yeah, number one. Politics of sex, which is still one of my favorites. One of my favorites. I keep forgetting that. Spanky kids. That's the day-rooted one. Yep. Spank your kids, say, America. That's right. Three. How the SBC got played. Four. Yep. Why gambling is gay? Yeah, five. Can Roman Catholicism build great nations? There we go. Six. OK, and then our source seventh one coming out. Which would be coming out if all the stars align and we can get everything ready and to one. I'm 90% uploaded with the first video. Yeah. Is, um, is we'll be released next Tuesday. Oh, 91. No, not next Tuesday, game. Come on. Next Tuesday? No, no, in two weeks. What? Two weeks? Who has the schedule? I thought. Yeah. Yeah. We were like doing a live show. I dropped on the next show. So two weeks. Yeah. And two weeks from now. You haven't even recorded yourself. I haven't recorded my. I wouldn't even talk to you. Next week, it'll be done. I haven't recorded mine yet. I'm over promised another liberal right now. I'm just saying so. So two weeks. The next synodoc is Holy Wars. Yes. Based off our conference title. Yeah. Holy Wars. Um, just worth the crusades in the Christian life. Right. That's a that's five left fees. 2026. That's five left fees. 2026 October. And Franklin, um, Tennessee for sponsors and vendors. We got very few spots left, but you can reach out to us. Reach out, um, I guess just me water boy at crosspulted.com. Uh, if you want to sponsor, Vendor, do us on stage plug. Cool. Can I talk about you for a second? Did the docks for a minute? I think this is really important. I was, um, at the theater, watching a film. I can't remember which one it was. But as I was doing this, that my phone buzzed right before the, the theater started before the movie started. And I was like, oh, I can't have that. So I put it on focus. Do not disturb, put it in my pocket, like, put it away. And it hit me at the moment there that there is no other place on planet earth, where you can have a two and a half hour focus time without interruptions, experience together with a group of people. Yeah. Like there's no other place. And I'm, and that you can hear a logical argument, art, this express and displayed and a moment's experience with everybody for two and a half hours. I don't know any other place where I can hear a full logical art. That's all a theater is breaking down for you a world view and their argument how they got from here to there. And hopefully it makes sense, right? And then it moves you and emotionally, um, uh, establishes a their thought, inception in your Hig and pass your, uh, sleeping giants, right? You're sleeping, uh, uh, dragons. You know, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. And so like, yeah, all your defenses, right? It puts into sleep when you can use a different form of rhetoric. Beauty. Yes. And and persuasion. Yes. Absolutely. Everything else is interruption in one way or another, right? So if you, even if you're watching, like if you go to a comedy club, they make you put your cell phones away. But the thoughts are all broken apart and dip their scattered all over the place. You can have the experience with people. You go to church. People are using their cell phones as a bible. I do that. I get a notification. I'll swipe it away. I'll turn notifications off and then are my phone. But you're still distracted. It's not the same sort of thing. And so I'm like, theater is need to be protected. I think it all costs because this is the last place where you can have that experience. The other place that you can have that experience in small doses to me is cine docs or documentaries where you have still some interruptions, but they're not in the same sort of way like TV. If you're watching football or basketball, you're still scrolling through. You're going in might be tweeting about it. But what would what a what a doc that you're watching. You're really interested in the next 15 minutes. The next 10 minutes. It's done well. It's if it's done well. Absolutely. And so you'll give your attention to it. And it's the only place that I watch myself doing that. And you can do that even like with groups. Hey, man, did you see that doc? And then you guys can kind of have the experience together. What we're doing with these cine docs is trying to give a very focused, thoughtful presentation on an idea that in 20 to 30 minutes, you can have a general perspective on a topic, right? Focus topic, right? And so I love podcasting it like we're doing it right now. It can go off the rails and it can have multiple different touch points. It's like a comedy show. You can experience without the people, but it's not always a particularly focused thought on one thing, making an argument from beginning to end in an artistic way. Right. And so that's why I really like these because I think there's a very few places on planet earth where you can still have that type of experience. That's what we've been doing this spring. So this is our 10 year birthday. Yes. And so for we start in 2016, 2026, for our 10 year birthday, we said, we're going to do 10 synodox at least. And you know, we might keep going. We might keep doing more focus your attention. But we want to do 10 episodes. We've done six. The seventh is on Holy war. And and we've just finished writing it. We're in the process of producing it now. Again, as Gabe says, it's going to be dropping in the couple of weeks here. And then we've got three more in the hopper. Yeah. It's done. This one to me, I think is going to be our most important one. Like everything hinges on this one to me. Yeah. Yeah. Why? Well, because, okay, so I like the pro life one was good. A politics of sex was so important. It's so important. But Holy Wars is important because if you don't get this one right, none of the other ones matter. Why? Why care about abortion? Why care about the politics of sex and what laws do? Why care about, you know, anything spanking your kid? Why do you care about those things? And I'm trying to dispoil the whole thing. But yes, inside of this topic that we're doing, makes all the rest of them have their place in the conversation. See what you're saying. Right. And I think you have to watch it to get it. I'm going to probably express a little more as the show goes on. But we were talking about this earlier. We've had some really great teaching on the supremacy of Christ. The holiness of God over the last. Arcy Sprole. Yeah, 40 years. 34 years. Yeah, I was thinking about my journey in this probably start 2005, 2004, 2005, where my I started cutting my teeth on. I remember I mean, I'm thinking of like John Piper. Yes. Absolutely. I'm a reading Desiring God. I think as a senior in high school, so I'd be like 97, 98. Somewhere in there. Oh, man, I wouldn't there yet. No, no. 2000 reading Desiring God. I'm my senior in high school. But I mean, I mean, I made a big impact on me. I mean, I was, I was still, you know, I was all kinds of young and immature and foolish. But like, I remember that thesis of, you know, that God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him, that kind of twist on the first question of the catacism that, you know, that is chief advantage to glorify God by enjoying him forever. Yeah. And that idea of Christian hedonism, it's all bound up in the idea, though, of the supremacy of Christ and the, and, and your highest good, your highest pleasure, your highest happiness is actually found in God in Christ. You're supposed to seek that. Like that's, yeah, you're supposed to see glory, you're supposed to see joy. That's what you're made for. Yeah. But yeah, so we're thinking about like, so we've got this, you know, decades now of that. I mean, I know a bunch of people have really been blessed by Paul Washer's ministry. Yeah. Particularly on a focus on like, you know, I mean, I, I think the only thing I've ever seen, I take it back. I did, I did see, I was in and church where he preached one time. Yes. That's right. It was a job by a manager. In Atlanta right after G three. Yeah. But other than that, I think the only thing I've ever seen by him is that one little famous clip of shocking youth. I'm, I'm talking about you or some of the others ago. I can't remember how, I don't know why you're clapping. Yeah. I'm talking about you. I'm talking about you. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I've seen that. But I've got friends that, you know, I've been extremely blessed by his ministry over the years. And, and, and, and, and just a, a really laser focus on this is real. God is real. His holiness is real. Yeah. You're going to stand before God. And, and I think there's some something really, really potent about that. And at the same time, it hasn't, it hasn't had the kind of cultural impact that it really ought to, you know, and, and there's the holiness of God hasn't had. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, or at least the teaching around it hasn't touched down. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I would say, and, and I think there's maybe different reasons for this. We're talking about this, and before the show a little bit, but like, um, I think maybe some of it has to do with eschatology. Mm-hmm. A pessimistic eschatology, you know, Jesus come back any day, any minute. We don't have time. This world is bad. We don't have time to talk about a lot of other things, economics and politics and all these things. We just got to get people saved. We got to get them to turn away from their sins and, and, and turn to Jesus and, and be a, a, a gospel influence. And, and there's, they're like, that's good, but it's very, very narrow. It's very, very limited. Um, well, and I think it does something else too. I think you're right. I think it has been eschatology, but I would say it is kind of a touch it from another way where it's make God so holy that hit never touches down anywhere. Or just because very, very little bit. It's like, you know, no premarital sex. Right, right. You know, like, like, like, you know, just, okay, check. But it's like, but it's like, and, and, you know, and it's limited to your feelings or, um, your thoughts. Yeah. And maybe just a little bit outside of you, like, you know, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Don't have sex to your married. Yeah. And don't drink too much. Yeah. But it's very, very limited and very, very narrow often. Again, that doesn't have to be, but it is, but it frequently is. It is. So, um, all the preaching that I remember, I was going by thinking about this, all the preaching that I heard about the supremacy of Christ and the holiness of God, it was the thing that was shocking was like, I don't deserve to be in this level of, of this environment at all that Christ come to save me. I don't deserve any of it. And it, but it's true. And it's so true. It's so true. But the shocking part about all of it is is that he still came down to save you, right? Which means there's other things here that God loves. And it wants to make holy. It's even more shocking than you thought. Right. Right. We frequently stop at the shock that like, you know, you're standing in the presence of a holy God and he's claimed you, but it's like, no, no, no, I also claimed you're checking accounts. That's right. And I claimed you're living room. Yes. And your bedroom, and every, every second in your car, and I'm also claiming your time in your ballot box and their city council, and your immigration policy and your foreign policy. That's right. And, you know, the way you use guns and bombs, all the nations. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The unworthiness, you know, we, it never got to the part of like, but somebody made it worthy, right? Like that's, that's the thing. Like somebody justified this. Somebody saying, Pastor Wilson was praying one time and he was asking all these things and he's like, okay, Lord, we asked for this. We asked for this. He's like, and then we don't deserve to ask for any of this. But Christ does. And so we ask it in his name. Right. I remember I almost shouted, I was press material when he did this, but I almost took care of it. Glory. And that's true. But Christ has died so we can ask it in his name. It touches down somewhere. Right. You know, it's like, that's the part that we keep missing. One of the things that I know that has been said sometimes, maybe Piper, I don't remember who else, but kind of again, in this realm of like really good preaching, is the notion of he has claimed it and therefore he's worthy of it. Yeah. That idea. Yes. And I think again, it's good. And so obviously the centerpiece of that is he is worthy of our worship. Yeah. But that worship on the Lord's day, that worship in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, that worship and preaching, that worship and evangelism is also meant to bleed out and spill out. Yeah. And he is worthy of your worship at work. Yeah. And I don't mean you like singing, getting underneath and praying or whatever. Well, while you're working on the car, I mean, you're working on that car to the glory of God. That's right. I mean, I mean, you loving your wife, ticking her on a walk, kissing her neck to the glory of God. I mean, you wrestling with the kids and mowing the lawn as a living sacrifice. Right. That's what it says. You offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing and acceptable to him. And you do that by not being conformed to this world, by being transformed by the renewing of your mind, which means how you think about everything. It's like, you know, how you're spending your money. How you buy, what car you buy, business deals. Yeah. That's, you're to offer it all up as a sacrifice. Yeah. Was it, was it, you Toby that came up with the conference thing, Holy Wars? I think it was, I think so. I think it was you that, um, and since we've been kind of thinking about this for the conference in October, you know, Holy, there's, there's the idea of Holy Wars, which I immediately just jumped to the crusades. Yeah. And obviously our point with the conference is not, it's not about, it's not just about the crusades, not about the crusades, it's about the holiness of God and God made us holy, God set us apart. But then, then even when I think about Holy, so first of all, Holy Wars just makes me think about the crusades, which is, we think, which we need to talk about, which we need to talk about. But the second thing is when I hear the word holy, I still, I mean, despite even some of the reform teaching on this, I still have this, I think of two things. I think one is like holiness is just in my head and in the sky, um, you know, kind of holy material. Yeah. Not material. And then the other thing is I think of, um, and I feel, I, I guess I feel this way more than anything is like, I don't feel holy. Yeah. You know, I'm, like, I know my sin, my family knows our sins. Like, I don't feel holy, but, um, Knox made a point off, offline. Um, and this is one of the glories of God's word is that we know and we believe that it's true, regardless of how my feelings, like, think about the holiness of God and God, God made me holy. Yeah. You know, you think of, um, all the reminders and, you know, exhortations, and, um, exhortations and Bible verses in, in the scriptures, even in New Testament, where, uh, I was read, I read Hebrews 10, 14 earlier, where it says for a by single offering, he is perfected for all time, those who are being sanctified. So it's like God made us holy and he's making us holy. He's perfected us. Yeah. He's perfected us. Yeah. And he's sanctifying us. Yeah. That's right. And you're like, wait a second. Yeah. Yeah. I don't feel holy, but that's part of the, it's almost like part of the repentance and all this is like, you just got to stop basing things off on how you feel and actually what God is doing in your life. It was remarkable. I mean, all the, the letters of Paul over and over and over again. He addresses them to the saints. Yeah. You can't fight God's battles without God's joy. We don't miss the fact that that doesn't stop many Christians. We'll still run right out into battle, even in the state of unforgiving sin. We'll run out into battle in the face of a guilty conscience. Dirty hearts will go out to the abortion clinics and the pride parades and we'll preach and we'll protest and we'll march and maybe we'll even sing. We'll plant churches or start Bible studies or Christian schools or new businesses for the kingdom, but God doesn't go out with us. In Corinth. It's, it's, it's holy one. So encouraging. We say saints, but like, no, that word is hoggios. That word means holy. Holy. Like to the holy ones. Yeah. In every case in that, I don't know if there were kids in it. In France, even. Oh, why? Nursing bag. Praise God. Yeah. But he says to the saints, to the holy ones and then he says, what the heck are you doing, someone with your step-on? Exactly. Why are you so messed up? Why are you getting drunk in the Lord's Supper? Yeah. You know, you can't take each other to court. Yeah. Holy people of God. You can't be so in each other. Yeah. That's because I'm sorry, go ahead, pastor. No, you go. I think one of the, so coming from a charismatic background, the filling part was so important for me. How you feel? How you felt was so important because that was how you knew it was real. The problem was I didn't understand the situation. I was actually in a legal environment. So when you're justified, it's not an emotional feeling, it's a legal standing. And so when that's the case, even though you have been justified and when you, when you have all the sin that you know, you deserve judgment for, all you're thinking about is, I'm not going to be able to get out of this. This is going to destroy me. Right. I am done. They got me, right? And then you hear, you're justified. There's no judgment going to be on you. No condemnation. You're being set free. You're debts are paid. They're takes a moment. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, say that again. I'm not going to go to jail. I ain't going to burn in hell. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I don't, I don't feel like that. Right. So I need to ask a couple of times, you sure about this. Make sure you double check because I don't want to get my emotions so high. Start celebrating before the reality kicks in. Like, is this true? So like, it's a legal standing. And so your emotions follow that eventually. But the truth is like, God has such a made you free legally. That is done. It's over. Sanctification is the process of coming to terms with now. This is how you live having been justified. Right. Right. And so, but when you understand that, then it's like, my feelings don't have any bearings whatsoever on the statement that was made about my justification. Right. Right. You don't have to be wrangled with and brought into submission to reality. Your feelings are as much part of your flesh. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And they're unruly. Yes. They're disobedient. Yes. They need to be discipled. Yes. And so you have to, you have to, you have to make your feelings obey. Yeah. Like your feelings are like, you know, no, no, no, no. You have to be joyful. This is no complaining. You got to fast your feelings. Yeah. This is why you have to like, what has God said about me? God has he written over me. What is God's name is on me? It didn't matter how you felt when the death angel was coming over. The only question was, was the blood over the top of the door post. For real? Yeah. Do you have the blood? Yes, it's there. I can see it. Okay. You're going to be all right. Yeah. Right. Like, do the things you were told to do? Oh, Bay and Joy happiness. And then the fruit of that will come out of it. But I think we've thought and we've, and I think it's probably because of eschatology, we've made an emotional decision about salvation. And to the point that when we hear the word salvation, we don't think physical anymore. Like the, the, the, and the biblically, salvation was a physical act that was taking place. You're being delivered from enemies. You got real enemies that are trying to kill you and destroy you and you need salvation. No, the body was thinking like, I just need internal salvation. No, we need something physical, right? We need a pastor in the script. One of the things was so beautiful in the opening of the script was, you talked about the fact that when the Moses came to the bush, he was told to take off his sand, his shoes, sandals, standing on holy ground that he was on was now holy. That's right. The ground is now holy, right? Like something has changed because God has touched down. Right. And like, that's the thing. The point of pointing to the wholeness of God is for you to say, wow, this is radical. And then it touches down and changes the environment that it touches so that you have to act different in the environment that the holiness has touched. That's why we're doing this whole doc. So I got a question, but we got to take care of some sponsors real quick. You want to get to that real quick? All right. All right. Business owners, your company, is it struggling to grow? What if I told you that the right employee could grow your business by 5, 10 or even 25%. You'd be crazy not to take that deal, right? 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You know, it seems like kind of a little bit of holiness in how it's described in scriptures like a balancing act, you know, because we already mentioned like holiness is not just pie in the sky, gnawstick, you know, good feelings kind of thing. Touch down. Touch us down. But also holiness is not like you have to do this and this so you can be holy. Right. You know, so the crusades kind of became that like you got to go do a holy battle, holy war so you could be holy now. And I think, you know, Roman Catholic Catholicism. There's a lot of, you know, I'm basically all religions outside of Christ. That's that's everybody everybody. Everybody is by works. Yeah, everybody wants holiness. Yeah. Holiness. Things that we emphasize in the doc is that holiness is actually inescapable. Yeah. It's not weather, but which it's one of those inescapable concepts. And so everybody knows they need to be holy and holy means to be set apart. It means to be sacred. It means to be, you know, dedicated. Yeah. And so everybody wants that, but you're right. And there's really ultimately comes down to either it's the holiness of the triumphant God, which is all of grace or it's a holiness of works righteousness and you're striving for it. You're trying to claw for it. You're trying to grasp for it, which is ultimately what Adam and Eve did in the garden. I mean, that tree was set apart. So they could be like God and they were like, we're going to grasp the fruit now. We're going to take it now. We're going to be like God. We're going to be holy on our own terms. Yeah. And so it and it and it destroyed their relationship with God. But you have the same thing either, you know, the charismatic, like emotional, mystical kind of holiness. I'm going to get the feeling. I'm going to go to the revival. We're going to have the praise band. We're going to the lights. We're going to have the show. And I'm going to get that feeling and I'm going to get, you know, I'll cranked up or a lot of times it's like the holiness of social activism. Yeah. I'm going to become I'm going to become active. I'm going to, you know, whatever. I'm going to march in the rallies. I'm going to go to the protests. Yeah. And I'm going to be holy. And I, you know, I mean, we, we need to end abortion. Yes. But pro life activism can become a substitute. Yeah. Oh, we've done it for the holiness of God. Yeah. Yeah. If you're not out there doing this, then you're not a Christian. Like we've done that with so many. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, you got, you know, and again, the holiness of God touches down and it impacts politics. Yeah. We believe that. It changes nations. But there's a way of being so politically oriented that now you, it's not the holiness of God driving us. We got to fix our politics first. Yeah. Now you're just, you're just a political activist. Now you're just a right winger. Now you're just a Republican or whatever. And you're going to, you're going to, we're going to fix this. We're going to end the immigration problem. We're going to end abortion. We're going to end game Mirage. We're going to, we're going to end all these senseless wars. Which need to be ended, by the way. I mean, it's for real. I mean, there's all kinds of things that need to be changed. Yeah. The massive difference between being driven by the holiness of God, the actual holiness of God and you doing it in your own strength. Again, we, one of the central metaphors that we use in the doc is the story of the Exodus and that, that holiness touching down and then that holiness going in with Moses into the land and trouncing the Egyptian empire, making war, leading the people out and then leading them by that pillar of cloud by day and that fire by night. And then leading them through the wilderness. And of course, it leads them all the way to the promised land and God sends the spies in and says, all right, I want you to just take the land. And of course, Joshua and Caleb come back and they say, it's massive, it's huge. If God is with us, we can't fail. And the other 10 say, it's massive, it's huge. We're not fail. We're screwed. There's giants in the land. We can't do this. And God says, all right. We think that you don't think I can do this. Then you're going to die in this land. And then of course, right away, they're like, no, never mind. It's too late. We're going to go. We're going to go. And God says, no, you can't go now. I'm not with you. And they say, no, no, we're going to go. And what do they do? They bustle an army together, march in and get obliterated. It would be hard to be Caleb and Joshua and say, like, I'm telling you so. It's not to it. But that's the difference. So you can be part of God's people, like those 10 spies. I don't like what you preach it right now, pastor. And you can be part of God's people. And you can start trying to take the land in your own way. Without God's blessing. Your own strength, your own wisdom, your own ingenuity. And that's a fake holiness. That's a false holiness. It's an alternative holiness. It's a grasping for the fruit. You can go God's way. And if God is with you, then it's blessing. If God is with you, it's like taking Jericho, right? And that was the promise. It's like the difference in Leviticus and Deuteronomy a couple times. It says, basically, when God is with you, when you got God's blessing, there'll be like five or 10 of you chasing thousands of them. Deuteronomy, 28, yeah. But when God is not with you, when God has left you, there'll be five or 10 of them chasing thousands of you. Chasing thousands of you. That's right. And like, hello people. That's the world we live in. I mean, you got five blue-haired lesbians chasing millions of Christians. And the temptation is to be like, you know what we need? Power. You're right. You're like, yes. You're right. Amazing. But you need the right kind of power. Because there's a way of immediately, like you're basically saying, like, we need a king like the nations. We need a king like all the nations. If we just had a bigger army and we just, you know, a bigger ice, that's what we need, a bigger ice. We're going to drive out all the illegals. No. No. You need God's blessing for the weapons of our warfare. Yeah. You need God's blessing. You know, when God's blessing comes, and this is where, you know, some of the people on my, my writer is going to be like, so you're just want to, you know, you just want to just preach the gospel. This is more of that. Third whaism. And I want to just save with the record. No, no, no. You know, the third whaism just preached the gospel is, didn't work. Can go to hell. Right. I mean, seriously. Yes. No, no. God's holiness touches down. And when you've got God's blessing, God's blessing comes and says, take the land. Yeah. Like this, my way, by the spirit, by the law of God. It's not running ahead of that pillar of cloud and fire. And it's not lagging behind. It takes the land. It really does believe in conquest. And that's where, you know, the, so what we're trying to do in this document, we're trying to do for this conference this fall is hold these things together. That's right. Is it? No, no, we believe in dominion. Yep. Yes, absolutely. Here on earth. Yes. We believe that Jesus Christ has claimed every square inch of this world. Yep. Every inch of it belongs to Jesus Christ. That tiny little patch of sand that Moses stood on and took his sandals off has become the entire world by the death, bear on resurrection of Jesus Christ by his ascension and by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. That curtain was torn to and the whole world got lit and now it all belongs to him, which means economic policy belongs to him. Healthcare belongs to him. Military belongs to him. All belongs to Jesus Christ and we are his servants. We are his priesthood called to make holy war. We are called to take all of it and transform all of it into a living sacrifice such that it pleases God that it's a sweet aroma. Your family, sweet aroma, your job, sweet aroma, all of it's got to be a sweet and it's got to please him. It's got to obey him. But it's his way, his timing, not our way, not our timing and it's not just a feeling. There was a moment where all of the previous conferences got tested. You had the conferences on holiness, the conferences on supremacy of Christ to the nations. You had all these great conversations that were so dear to me, confess on worship. Come on now. And then COVID comes and the test was failed. Oh, man. You don't get to go to church. You got to put on a mask. We say yes, mask. You got to get the shot. You got to stand part. You can't go to work. No, no, no. You guess what? You can't even have your own family over your house. No thanks given for you. Right? We went from the holiness of God in thought to the holiness of COVID protocols. It was the holiness of the state. But it was the holiness of the state. Some of us showed our true colors though. Some of us showed our true colors because you have people like Jonathan Lehman who are going to be a limb marches. Yeah. Oh, for real. So that was, I mean, that wasn't that. I mean, I think for many, many people, that was a real breaking point. And I think a number of people, their eyes kind of opened up all of a sudden. Like, oh, because their leaders were letting them down. Because it was, yeah, you stand six for your part, no gathering in crowds, no going to church. And this is a strip club, or abortion clinic, or a pot shop. Right? Those were new sanctuaries. Those were the things were, those were the holy places. You could go there and, you know, and the virus, you know, it knew. Yeah. You can't go. And then suddenly BLM marches. Yeah. You can't go to church, but you can go to church. Right. Right. Right. If you go into worship at the shrine of anti-racism and George Floyd and George Floyd and, you know, and again, humanistic salvation. Yeah. We're going to create a new, a new humanity. Yeah. We're going to march together. We're going to chant slogans. Funny how that holiness touches down. Oh, it, yeah. That false holiness, right? Yeah. Like, it touches, and then so many of our leaders will like, you know, they're like, but, but, but Romans 13. Yeah. No. Romans 13 says this magistrate has to obey Jesus. I'm going around, guys. Romans 13 doesn't say they get to be Jesus. Yeah, right. It's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's they have to obey Jesus. There, there is minister. There is decay. Yeah. And a bunch of people, well, no, no, you don't understand. You don't understand. You know, they've been oppressed and, you know, they, you know, it was, it was the testing point. Yeah. Jacob Raoam. Yes. Tim Stevens. Yeah. You know, our boys in Canada, another James Cotes. James Cotes. I mean, talk about, you know, that's what. What a holy priesthood looks like. I'm going to tell you something else too. My reformed them hurt during this moment, because all my reformed doctrine and my reformed friends got tried, you know, you know, you know, you did the best. It was Calvary Chapel Brothers. I was going to, that's what I'm just going to say. Them dog on cares, man, ex-boy. Yeah. A lot of them were like, a lot of calvary. They're the first ones to be like, no, you ain't going to come up in here in the lower house. Yeah. And I'm like, what did they start acting like Calvin and fifths? And what is going on here? Yeah. And I'm like, what are the things? Don't tell them. No, I know it bothers me so much. Like they just completely outdid us. We had so many friends in California. Yes. And you know, reformed Presbyterian reformed Baptist, whatever. And they're like, their churches were closed. And so they were going to Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel was open. And they're like, meeting each other in the church. Yeah. And they're like, hey, you're reformed, you're reformed. Yeah. Don't tell me. I'm going to chapel. I was talking to a friend two weeks ago on one of my business trips and he's just talking about how one of his churches that he knew in Florida didn't shut down and kind of got, you know, fought all this and everything. And I said, let me guess. Is it Calvary Chapel? He said, yes. That's like, that happened in California. The Calvary Chapel Church is in California. Calvary Chapel Church is in Florida. I'm super grateful also. I want to say the CRC churches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, very much. It was a really, really heartening and encouraging time actually because by and large, I think there was like a couple of exceptions, but it was like, you know, 99% of the CRC said, no, this is holy to God. You do not have authority over where it is sacrament. You do not have authority over this. If there's a, if there is a active shooter, okay, you can run in. If that building isn't fired. You can take his body out after we done with him. That's what you can do. Because we are carrying him. We are carrying him. Our guns are holy. There's, there's true civil authority over life and death. Yeah. In that sense, protection of life. God has authorized you to use the sword to do that under His law, but you do not have authority to tell us whether we can sing or not. You do not have authority to tell whether we can gather together or not. You do not have authority to say whether we can celebrate the Lord's supper or not. You do not have that authority and, and the, and you do not have authority over our families. Yeah. Yes. To tell us the healthcare decisions we will make that will be best, best for our families. You do not have authority over, over, over vaccination schedules. You do not have authority over these things because that's not been given to you by Jesus Christ. That authority over healthcare decisions has been given to families. Yep. And the authority of worship has been given to elders and pastors. Yeah. That's sacred. That's holy. We're still, I think we're still working some of that out. You know what's encouraging too is that I think a lot of the kids that were in high school. Do you think about this as like six years ago now? Yeah. We're going on six, seven years. Yeah, it's twenty twenty six years. So like this is, people have graduated college since then. You know what I mean? Like, been out of high school for a while. But that group of people are so encouraging to me because they felt what it was like to have a false holiness applied to their lives. That's right. And when Christians don't stand up, there's, there are little, not to say bitter, but they're not willing to tolerate much on that level. And I'm encouraged by that next generation that's coming up because they're looking like, wait a second, somebody's going to take some dominion here. Right. And it is going to be the people who actually love and fear God and care about his holy righteous ways or it's going to be people who don't. And that's going to deter, we're going to be the ones that determine that by how much we engage by acting like this is holy ground. The other thing is that there's a book. I love the title of this book. The book, it wasn't as much as I wanted it to be, but it was a great title. And I think it matches all of this, which is diapers, dishes and dominion. Yeah. That's right. The book because it puts in the context, this, this holiness applies all the way out. Yeah. Like, it was Gary North that said, you know, if a person came to me and said, hey, I'm a pastor and they're like, you know, pastor, my wife, she left me. I'm out on my, my luck. Don't have a job. So economics is bad for me right now. I'm drunk a lot. And you know, my life's just falling apart. My kids don't love me. He's like, I'm not going to come up with a plan for him to get on his feet. The first thing I'm going to do is like, you need to repent. That's the first thing you need to do. And you need to seek the Lord because once you repent and you act the way that God tells you to act, there's certain blessings that follow that, right? It's like a, a country song when you play it backwards, you get your dog back, you get your car back, you get your wife. So it's excellent. But then he said, in so for nation, what come to me and say, hey, our families are broken apart. There's no economy that's working. Overrun by it. People hate us. Notice all the physical tangible things are not disconnected from repentance. And notice that repentance is not disconnected from all the physical, natural things that are going on. You, these two things work together, but there is a process and order them by which that these things happen. You need to come to repent. You need gospel preaching and teaching. You need the hoist of God teaching. The supremacy of Christ teaching because it has a test, right? There's a moment where it's going to stand up. And so you need that teacher so you can apply it. How do you love your wife, like Christ loved the church and he goes and dies for it? How do you handle your finances? How do you deal with your kids? How do you restore these things? Well, it starts somewhere and then it works his way out. These things are not separated and we've separated them far too much. Right. And one of the dangers we face is that because we've been in this milieu of kind of a revivalism, I was going to, yeah, that's right. You know, it's, there's, again, we believe in revival. We need revival. But revivalism of this sort of emotionalism and then even the social activism because of these things that have been the sort of holiness substitutes. Yeah. The temptation though is to think, okay, that didn't work. Holiness doesn't work. It's just, you know, it's just third wayism. It's just, just preach the gospelism. It's just, you know, we saw what that got us. That got us, you know, Russell Moore and David French. That gave us, you know, a bunch of just mealy mouths. That's enough to make me vomit. And so I think we're seeing, and I think it's understandable. A lot of people hunting for something else. And I think the thing that we want to say is we need to make sure that that's something else is God's word. And yes, study history, study how Calvin and Knox and the Huguenots and the Scottish Covenanters and the founders of our nation, study how they applied God's word to all of life and learn from that wisdom. But there's a temptation, I think, to turn to just a different kind of humanistic solution. Right. Right. That we're just going to run this and we're going to take it from the liberals. We're going to take it from the progressives. We're going to take it from the woke Nazis. And we're just going to run it and it's going to be better. Anything will be better than this. Actually, no, no. Pastor Wilson likes to say there's no situation. So bad that you can't make it worse. Yeah, that's right. There's, you know, like you can, you can run away from the commies and you can, you know, become Nazis. Yeah. That's exactly what happened to Vimar. Yeah. But it's like real. It's totally real. And so it's like, no, in your zeal to see repentance and your zeal to see America restored Christ and your zeal to see sanity restored to America. You've got to remember this is only possible by the holiness of God. That's only possible by his holy word. Yeah. You got to get right with God. You got to repent with it. And then you got to get back in the word. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, again, I think we said this on the show before, but the single most quoted book in all of the founding fathers writings of this nation of America was the Bible. Yeah. And the single most quoted book of the Bible was Deuteronomy. And it was, and it's like not even close. Not even close. Like twice as much as like, you know, John Locke and other political philosophers. Like, yeah, do I believe in a natural law? Yes, I do. But that's, that, but God's word is the ultimate standard of what that is. Yeah. And there's a way of starting to go, well, let's just, let's just tap into like broad philosophy. Let's just tap into just, just a natural law. Right. Again, it's like, it depends on what you mean by that. But a whole bunch of that, if you're not careful, if you're not constantly bringing back to scripture and checking it by scripture and having it under the authority of Jesus Christ, that's going to take you somewhere that you don't want to go. You're going to run away from me. Gabe, when's the conference? October 1st, 2nd and 3rd in Franklin, Tennessee. It's at the Franklin, the factory in Franklin, Franklin, Tennessee were kicking off. The factory. Yeah, the factory in Franklin is what it's called, the factory in Franklin. And then, you know, Baron Soms, Thursday night kicks off. We'll be doing our pre-business conference also that afternoon. You know, we, we do, when we do this every year, we do kind of pastors dinner, kind of lunch in excuse me for any basically church leadership luncheon on Friday. And then we do a business luncheon on Saturday. So all those things are in our speakers. We got, of course, Pastor Doug Wilson, as always, Dr. Merkel, Dr. Ben Merkel. I just, I just want to say that we've been having past the Wilson and our conference before everybody else started inviting past ones to the conference. I just want to make that known. I just want to make it known. I just want to give him two talks. I just want to, I just want to, can't do two talks this year. Got it. So, because y'all are inviting them all to y'all's conference. Exactly. But, uh, we got Dr. Joe Boot. And yes, Joe Boot, Dr. Joe Rigny, Dr. George Grant, a lot of doctors this year. Jared Longshore, Dr. Jared Longshore, for real. You know, just, just me, Pastor Toby. All right, Paul. Yeah. But, and then, of course, we do a live show on Saturday afternoon, Saturday afternoon, special guests. We haven't announced those yet, but we'll announce in those pretty soon. Yeah. On the theme, we'll, we'll, we'll record a live show. You can be a live studio audience there with us. Yeah. Of course, lots of breaks with feasting and fellowship. Yes. There's usually a singles mixer. Yeah. We'll do that. Um, likely, if you guys remember our first conference wasn't, we go to Franklin, Tennessee. Yeah. It was at the old, uh, green astroturf. It's not there anymore. No, it's there, but it's now owned by like a corporate national corporation. Yeah. Um, so like, it's owned by like Pfizer or something. Yeah. Probably. It's kind of poetic when you think about it. Yeah. The guy that rented it to us, like I can't even find his contact info on my phone anymore. Yeah. I don't know. I lost contact. I can't find him. I'm not using an angel. I didn't even for you to say that. I came down and what was like, we had like three weeks, five weeks. We had like, um, three or four weeks to find it. So remember Rocket Town kicked us out in September. Yeah. And our conference then was on April 1st, 2nd, I think October, excuse me, October 1st, 2nd, 3rd. Yeah. We're bringing this back around in October 1st, 2nd, 3rd. Um, and so in September, they finally gave us the final, because I'd been pushing the guy and he will pay your fines. I said, we'd pay your, because your COVID, the Nashville was shut down. Yeah. And I told him I was like, I'll pay your fines. Who cares? You know, just let the board know we got this. Yeah. And that kind of thing is like the board's not going to let you do this. And so the first, I think is the first week in September, they gave us the official, like, no, you can't be here. We had a thousand people sign up. Right. A little less than a thousand. We had a thousand people sign up. And I defined, we had to scramble me and Ian Kern. Ian Kern, we had to scramble to find a building that would hold a thousand people in COVID. When, and things were so limited, when what happened was Franklin was in Wilson, Williamson County and they were open. Yeah. Um, Nashville, whatever county that was in, the city of Nashville was, was closed. And so we end up the only place we could go was Franklin and the only place I could find out, fit a thousand people is this like green and dark soccer turf. And so we had to find, and then I had to find a stage, chairs, everything. It was awesome. It was, it was glorious. It was, it was so, it was amazing. And of course, that was like one, I think probably one of the only conferences in the country. Yeah. We're the only in person conference in person. And like that I'm aware of no mass in the fall, 2020. Well, you had and people that hadn't seen been around people. No, I know for months, it was weird. And you're just walking in and it was like, I think people just started hugging each other. We were like singing. We were singing songs and together, we had beer and songs together. But I think there's just like the joy and the excitement of just being together. I remember the cops got caught. The cops still got caught in Franklin. Even though it was legal. It was legal. And they came by and they were just like, they told you like, you know what you're doing is legal. Yeah. And you're like, yeah. And they're like, okay, good. Apparently they just needed to say they'd come by. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we're so we're back in Franklin. This time the Franklin fact. So our singles night, we do singles night out of conference. And in fact, every year someone's got married, met each other for a single. Singles met each other. It happened this last year. Our volunteer lead coordinator. Whoa. Who's going to be volunteer? Him and his wife are now going to be volunteering leading our coordinator. One. This year. So they found each other at singles night. So we're going to be in Franklin. If you guys remember that nice bowling alley restaurant bar. Yes. Oh, we went for like the after party. Yeah, we were going for the after party. That's where we're going to have singles night. So we started breaking out outside. We were by with smoking cigars. Yeah, yeah. It was fantastic. Yeah. So lots of singing, lots of fellowship. And we think we really do believe that this is a this is a crucial topic for our moment. Yeah. For this time because holy this is earthy. Yeah. And that's not just in my head. That's right. And it touches down in your family. It touches down in your church. It touches down in your nation. And we we have been called to be a holy people. And that it doesn't just mean you you sort of have this like, you know, electromagnetic pulse or something like that. It means obedience to God in every area of life. It means every area of life belongs to him. And it's consecrated to him. And so we got to figure out how to offer it up as a living sacrifice in obedience to him. So we've been doing this doc in one of the questions I've been asking myself since we've been thinking through this topic is, okay, if if I am declared holy by God, what is that mean to my life? Yeah. You have to answer that question. What is what is if you're holy if you're set apart, what does that mean for you and your family and your neighborhood, your marriage and your work and everything? It's earthy. Part of the this is in the diet. I don't want to spoil too much. But one of the things you talked about was that that fire that was on that bush was now lit inside of Moses. Yeah. Like you now have been lit with that fire. And it's not just internal. No, it actually is doing things. It's transforming everything so that now where you go, like now you can say with David, who is this uncircumcised philistine that defies the armies of God? Right. No, no, no, we don't fight that. Right. Yeah, you don't get to do that. Speaking of Anthony Fauci. Yeah. website for the conference. Go to file that fees.com. Go to the app. A full of network works also. Don't forget to check out the 10 shots of sanity. In the app is the best place. It's all organized there. Bridges actually finish organizing. Nice. Thank you. And if you appreciate those docs, please share them. That's right. If they're a blessing to you, a blessing to your family, share them. We want them to be kind of the kind of things that could be used in small groups. They could be used in your family. They could be used as Sunday school or youth group things. If they're helpful to you, please tell us. Please share them with other people because your sharing of them is the best currency. Also, don't forget to tell your friends about the conference. Yes. Tell your friends. We're almost halfway sold out. Oh, wow. Let's go. So send your messages to your friends. It's still early bird pricing until the end of this month. Yeah. July 1st. So best pricing is now. But tell your friends, tell your family. Share it as much as possible. It's a huge help to us. We appreciate you. So if you're single, get married. If you married, have you some kids? If you have kids, go baptize them. Until next time, love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. No fight, laugh and feast. This is Cross-Politik.