Stop Watching "The Chosen" | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to be talking about The Chosen.

That's right. You've seen the title, Stop Watching The Chosen, and you're probably thinking, oh my gosh, here we go.

This is just like another Facebook rant coming my direction. I hope that's not true. What John and I aim to do today is have a conversation, not so much about The Chosen specifically, but really what we're aiming to get at is the underlying problems, the systemic problem of which

The Chosen is just a manifestation. There are things going on with us in terms of the things that we seek and desire and crave when it comes to our spiritual experience.

There are also things perhaps that many of us are missing in our Christian lives that we're trying to find in other places like watching a show such as The Chosen.

So John and I are going to think about all of these things. We're going to talk about the second commandment and whether or not it's legitimate to depict the

Lord Jesus at all, and whether it's okay to take artistic liberty in projecting the life and the personality of our

Lord and Savior. Stay tuned for this conversation. We hope it's helpful to you. If you'd like to help support

Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast.

John and I are happy to be here as the cheesy expressions on our faces would indicate, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, clarifying the gospel, and reclaiming the purpose of Christ's kingdom.

These are conversations that we have about the Christian life from a Reformed and confessional and pastoral perspective.

Your hosts today around the virtual table are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

If you are not watching the video format, you're missing out because John is just doing a merch and swag presentation where he's just flashing various things across your screen.

If you're listening in audio format, I don't know, you're really not missing very much. We've met today to podcast,

John. This is our second recording today, though, for the listener and their experiences, it's going to be last week and then this week.

Last week, we had a good and important conversation about justification and regeneration and all those kinds of things pertaining to a video that was released.

We leave that content to you. But today, we're going to have another conversation that I think is relevant.

We try to be relevant here at Theocast. Amen. Amen. And well, I just want to say more current events here.

Sometimes this is what we do now. Yeah, people may not know, but we launched the podcast on Wednesdays. We actually record on Wednesdays as well.

And I look forward, we get in office early in the mornings and have a time of fellowship and talk and kind of map out what we what we want to record for the next few weeks.

We've got some good stuff lined up on prayer and the kingdom. And we're going to say we're going to be we're going to have our friend

Pat Abendroth on. We're going to record hopefully two episodes with him on the covenant of works.

Lord willing, we're coming to California. I'll just state this now. Lord willing, we're going to West Cal to see our friends

Mike and Pat Abendroth and the NoCo Radio and the Pactum. And we'd love it. And of course, all the

Westminster faculty. Yes, we're there to go to the conference. And we might be putting together a little

Theocast to get together. So who knows? And some Theocast, Pactum, NoCo Radio mashup stuff.

We may have to get Scott Clark on a pod. Who knows? Who knows what's going to happen? The microphones might catch on fire if we get all of that hot take.

If he can handle us Baptists. All right, we we've bantered a little bit,

John, but let's let's turn. Stop watching The Chosen. Oh, really? Oh, really? That was your title.

That wasn't my title. Oh, my goodness. Oh, dangerous. Yes. I don't know about you,

Justin, but I've been asked over the last few years multiple times about what my thoughts are on The Chosen.

And have I watched it? And so I'll come out of the gate and speak for Justin and I. We have not watched it. Not one second.

No, I've seen advertisements. I have seen advertisement clips of it personally, just from a personal standpoint.

It kind of creeps me out a little bit. I don't like to be told what Jesus may have looked like.

That has nothing to do with what we're going to talk about theologically. I'm withholding comment. It's just kind of a personal situation where I'm like, yeah,

I don't really want to associate someone's human face and body with the actual person of Christ.

And we could get into children's Bibles and all that kind of stuff, but we're not going to. Oh, we may. We'll get into all this.

Come on, man. Not children's Bibles. Well, here's an introduction. The second commandment may or may not come up. The greatest argument

I've heard. So I'm going to start with the argumentation. The greatest argument I've heard for this particular TV show is that a lot of people who are not interested in Christ or the gospel or the

Bible are now actually interested because they are seeing the humanity, the human side of Christ.

And there's a connection with that where they can see he's tired and he needs to sleep.

And in other words, he is experiencing the world in the way in which we experienced the world and yet didn't give in to temptation and yet loved us and was kind and sacrificed and died.

Amen to all those things about Jesus. Yeah, yeah. We are not docetists in those ways.

We would agree. I mean, his humanity is clearly revealed in the scripture and we should preach it. Yeah. So and then the other argument is like, why are you guys going to be so critical for something that God is obviously using to spread the gospel?

And that's where mass adaptation, in other words, people accepting and watching it, doesn't mean they actually are embracing the gospel.

So we have to be careful with mass adaptation of being a successful use of something that God is for.

So we would have to then say, is God actually for this type of medium and media? And should we be embracing it or is there a problem?

And so that's where we're going to address and kind of help you think through this. I don't, this is a very passionate conversation.

There are people on either end of this who are extremely opinionated, whether for it or against it.

So I have some serious theological thoughts about these things, but in all honesty, man, I feel like I'm just kind of the guy in the middle.

I'm just about to dump buckets of cold water everywhere because I'm not emotionally worked up over this.

My thoughts, I'll share them in a minute. I want to be very clear. I've not watched any of this show. And so this podcast is not primarily about us giving particular takes on some of the things that people often raise on Facebook or whatever about the

Chosen, you know, the Arianism and the Mormonism and the, you know, whatever, praying to the dead. I don't even, all these things that are associated with the producer and the guy that plays

Jesus in the show. That is the least of my concerns in some regards. I just want to say that from the jump.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and listen, if, if you're presenting this to me as a, as a way to share the gospel with people

I have a hard time with that. And I'll just say this up front. The man who plays or projecting to be

Jesus does not understand the same gospel that I do. He is encouraging people to pray the rosary, to pray to dead saints.

He's Roman Catholic is open to that. The director has said that the Jesus of the Mormons and the

Jesus of the Bible is the same Jesus, which is obviously false and heterodox. And so there, the whole thing, anytime

Hollywood touches the Bible, it, it gets messed up. It's, it's, I mean, just go back to what, what was it?

The Noah and there was these giants who built the ark. It's just crazy.

I mean, the Nephilim, man, anyway. Uh, but I want to clarify what I said a minute ago. I care tremendously about Arianism, the heresy that is

Arianism. I care tremendously about the deity and the humanity of Jesus. All of those things. You know, the ancient creeds that affirm, you know, orthodox

Christology, et cetera. I'm, I'm there a hundred percent. And that's not what I meant. What I mean is people will hinge their entire argument about whether a person should watch the chosen or not based upon the theology of the producer.

And I'm just kind of like that to me is secondary because even if the producer had an orthodox

Christology, my concerns theologically that I'm going to share today would be the same.

That's right. Which, and there have been videos produced in the past about the gospels.

For sure. I watched some as a kid, man. Yeah. And they're all, there are just quoting scripture. There's no, and I might even speak autobiographically about that in SR.

Um, yeah, just my, my own experience of watching Jesus movie, like the really long one that was produced back in maybe the seventies.

Yeah. Like we watched that a lot as a kid when I was a kid. And, um, I just think we're naive if we don't realize that how

Jesus is depicted in movie form like this affects the way we think about him. If we don't acknowledge that we are sorely misguided and I think there's problems with that.

That's right. Uh, we'll get into that more in a minute. Yeah. So let's just jump into it. Uh, theologically, this is really what we're going to be dealing with.

Um, and I, and Justin and I, again, we haven't seen it, so we don't have an emotional connection with it.

I know many people have said that they've been encouraged by it. They've been strengthened by it, that it's created an affection for Christ, um, for his word, people who were not interested in church are interested in church now and, um, and so we're.

I'm not here to remove the legitimacy of some of the maybe positive experiences that you have had.

Um, you know, for instance, there are truths that you can find and be encouraged by in the

Roman Catholic church. Not everything they teach there is heresy. So to say that everything in the chosen is heresy and everything that's in there is wrong and everything that's in there is unbiblical is not what we're saying.

Okay. So let's start there to say that there isn't that, uh, we're not criticism, whether it's accurate or not, uh, or the producers.

So Justin, what are we criticizing? Several things, man. And I'm not trying to give the bullet point list and then what the outline of the show or anything.

But several, several things on our minds are the dangers of depicting

Christ in these ways, because inherently and as a necessary part of it, you are taking a lot of artistic liberty when it comes to the presentation and depiction of Christ.

You go way beyond where the scripture goes. And so we're going to contend for the sufficiency of scripture.

The fact that the Lord has given us everything that we need to know about the Lord Jesus, who he is and what he came to accomplish that was planned from before the foundation of the world.

And it's, yeah, it's enough. Right. So he's told us what we need to know. And so that's a part of this because the liberty that's taken, it's conjecture and it does color and tint how people perceive and think of the

Lord Jesus. That's a problem. Beyond that, we will talk some about, I mean,

I think I'm happy to talk a little bit about the second commandment in that the Lord knew what he was doing and telling us not to make images of him.

And I know that Jesus took on a body, you know, or the God, the Son took on a body and became Jesus of Nazareth. That's true.

But nothing is made of his physical appearance in the scriptures. There is less written of the physical appearance of Christ than there is a number of saints in the

Old Testament. And I think that's important. David, I mean, and even several of the people in Genesis, you know, in terms of their physical appearance, male and female.

And so it's just interesting to me that the only thing even alluded to about the appearance of Christ is in Isaiah 53 and how there was nothing remarkable of his appearance that we should take notice of.

And we knew he had a beard because they ripped it out and we know that he's a man and that's about all we know.

But we're not told, you know, other things. And so even to make images of him and to project images of him, it goes in bad directions really quickly.

I don't even need to get off on those tangents. We may in Semper Reformanda if we want to have like a really lively, fun conversation, but then

I think what we want to do too, in addition to talking about some of those concerns, the sufficiency of scripture and even second commandment considerations, we want to talk about where some of this is maybe motivated, the motivation comes from for us in terms of why we find this stuff so appealing.

And it is perhaps because we've always heard an anemic gospel. We've had an anemic ecclesiastical church experience, and so we're looking for something else to really take us to another level spiritually.

And then I think alongside that too, John, we may talk a little bit about the quest for illegitimate religious certainty and experience that we need to know and experience things that are not entirely legitimate.

So all of that I think is where our concerns are coming from. So I think this is clear. Our concerns are not with the chosen in particular.

We understand the chosen to be just a manifestation or a symptom of a systemic problem, and we want to speak to that systemic issue, not the symptom.

Yeah. And I'm going to backtrack a little bit here. Please do, John, backtrack just a little bit and just say one of the concerns

I do have though, is that like, for instance, they're offering commentary on the white spaces, and I struggle to allow anybody to offer me commentating theologically on the white spaces when

I can't even trust their assessment of Scripture to be. So I'm going back on the whole director thing.

I'm just saying. And by white spaces, you're meaning, just to clarify for the listener. Yeah. What was not written in between the lines of what was not written.

I just realized that could be misunderstood. Yeah. What wasn't written? Yeah. I mean, and then the way they joked with each other and the way that they interacted with each other and Jesus' facial expressions and his emotions and all those kinds of things.

I just, I find it very disturbing because I don't need that.

I don't need you to tell me that to give me a sufficient understanding. Of the humanity of Christ.

Right. Exactly. Yep. And I also don't need that. I mean, because we can read things about when he rose from the grave, he showed them 40 days of signs of like eating and fellowshipping and have them talk.

Or even when he, you know, in John's gospel, I mean, he invites them, he yells at them, they're out on the boat and he yells at them to come ashore.

And it's like cooking food and like, Hey, let's eat. That's right. You know, I mean, that's human. Right. I mean, we get glimpses of that.

Right. He wept, you know, when Lazarus died. I mean, there's all kinds of, anyway. Yeah. So there's, um, we understand the human nature of it.

The struggle with this is that, you know, that would be say, you know, here's another argument,

Justin. I'm playing a little bit of the devil's advocate here. But that would be to say like, well, what can we never read historical fiction?

Can we never read, you know, things that are outside of scripture to help us inform our idea of what the

Bible says. And yes, you and I use history. We use commentaries. We use, um, dictionaries.

We use all of these tools to help us mine the texts and get to the bottom of the text.

The go ahead. Well, I would draw a distinction between reading history and historical fiction, because I think that it's historical fiction out of bounds.

I mean, we can have that conversation, but what I do think we need to be careful of is not using historical fiction to formulate doctrine and to formulate an understanding of scripture.

And that is really what I think what you're driving at here is that whether people admit it or no, your viewing of the chosen is going to inform your understanding of scripture.

It's going to inform your understanding of the person of Jesus. And you're going to start reading this understanding that you've absorbed from a show into the pages of scripture.

When you read the Bible, it will happen. It's impossible for us not to do this, which is part of the reason that we're cautioning folks about.

So if you're watching this as a, you know, uh, you want to do it for a cultural observation, like why the culture is so fascinated by that, then that's fine.

I guess I still, I'm not going to. But the problem is what

I need to know about Christ to influence me properly. I mean, this is second Peter one, right?

Everything that we need for life and godliness has been granted to us by his great promises, right?

Those promises are found where? In scripture. So everything I need to know about Christ and my relationship and my responsibility to Christ has already been given to me.

Everything that I need to comfort me, to encourage me, to strengthen me, to drive me, to build me up, to ground me has already been given to me.

And here's the kicker. Excuse me. It was given to me by the inspiration of the spirit.

So you need to understand when I say the white lot, the white spaces, when we read the text, we know the

Holy spirit moved these men to write exactly what it is that they needed to write, then to go in between the lines and can bring out what you think is in between those lines is extremely dangerous.

We cannot do that when it comes to our view of Christ and who he is for us.

That has to come from the spirit only, which is given to us in the word. Through the word, right?

And faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. There's a lot of language in the New Testament. The apostles, we were talking about this earlier,

John, they very much valued the proclamation, the preaching, the heralding of Christ and the hearing of that word and Romans 10,

Romans 16 has some incredible language from Paul about how people are going to be strengthened and all of these things through my gospel, the preaching of like my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ.

And we could go first Corinthians one, second Corinthians three, a number of other things.

It is the vocal proclamation of the person and work of Christ as revealed in the word that is the means through which the

Lord saves his people and then sustains and sanctifies his people. And our concern here is that going well beyond where the scripture goes, we are going to start with maybe good intentions.

You're going to start depicting, presenting, and even preaching a Jesus that may or may not be what's been revealed to us in the pages of scripture because human beings have taken great liberty in presenting it this way and it will affect our thinking.

And I think let's go ahead and well, I'll pause for a second. Cause I don't want to go too far ahead here, but this is part of that quest for illegitimate religious experience that we're talking about.

Yeah. I want one last statement I want to put here. There's a dust up coming about this next season and it was sent to me recently.

This is the only reason why Justin and I, I think decided to do this is that I've had quite a few people send stuff to me and in the trailer, he says the statement,

I am the law, which some say this is a quote from the book of Mormon and whether it is or not, the director says, it's not a quote from the book of Mormon, but I don't really care.

The point of it is he says in the argumentation that this is a good quote. It does embody who Christ is. And I'm like, no, it doesn't.

Christ is not the law. He came to fulfill the law to say that I am the law.

No, he is the way, the truth, and the life. And these are, and you think, well, you're splitting hairs.

No, I'm not. I'm not splitting hairs. This is important to understand the law gospel distinction. And so you have

Jesus who is embodiment of the, like he is our King and God.

And you're projecting that he would, this is normal. This would be of a part of his theology that he would state,

I am the law. And it's like, he is not the law. And people think that I'm being crazy here, but I'm not.

And, and I think this is just an introduction to what's probably more coming down the pike of them changing some things, but this is a great example of why you, you start saying

Jesus said these things, or he would have said things like this, I'm out that you're going down the road of heresy.

And I don't want to have anything to do with it. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called faith versus faithfulness, a primer on rest.

And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer. I don't know that I have any more pointed thoughts on going beyond where the scripture goes.

I think we've been clear on that. The second commandment guys, I do think the Lord knew what he was doing here. John and I are not maybe as staunch on second commandment violations as some, maybe,

I'm just saying that that's possible though, I will say for my own money, I definitely take the second commandment seriously and do not see value in depicting the

Lord, including Jesus in human form. My question to you would be, what value does that bring when you depict him in art form?

There's paintings or sculptures or whatever, what value does that bring? I would also ask in particular with this kind of dramatic movie presentation, what value does that bring?

And why do you need what it's giving you? Is the scripture not enough? Is the preaching of Christ in your local church not enough?

Is life in the fellowship of the saints, the body of Christ, not enough? Those are significant questions for us to ponder.

And I think that we're after, I'll just go here now, I think that the chosen and things like it, of course, it's mediums that we're very comfortable with, we're acquainted with, we're familiar with, we're used to it.

We consume so many shows and movies anyway. It's like, well, why not Christianize that? Why not consume a show or a movie about Jesus?

Surely that's a good thing. Let's redeem this medium. And it's like, well, I understand those motivations, but I don't know that it's the way we should go about doing it.

I mean, we worship the Lord on his terms or not at all, frankly. I mean, our confession says that.

We are not free to determine the ways in which we worship God. We worship him as he has told us to do.

Or depict him or interact with him. He decides all of that. He has revealed himself in the pages of Holy Writ, and we should bind ourselves to that understanding and not go beyond it.

It's not helpful. So I think, again, we've said this, but we're after this experiential thing. I think humans have always craved experiences.

Our generation, our time is no different. And we are after a religious experience, this experience of Christ, this experience of the divine that will take us to another level spiritually.

That's what I think part of the motivation is here. It stirs my affections for Jesus.

It takes me to another level that I can't get to without watching this. Because it ministers to me in a unique way that I can't get anywhere else.

And again, my concerns here are, yeah, but if you from Jump Street are doing something that the

Lord has not commissioned, of which the Lord does not approve, that may very well take liberty and run off into error when it comes to the depiction of the

Lord Jesus. What are your affections based upon? What is this experience based upon?

We need to think seriously about these things. And this is a challenge. I mean, I'm a preacher of God's word.

You're a preacher of God's word. This is a challenge to preachers, and this is a challenge to congregants who come and sit and listen to preaching.

May we put great effort into preaching excellent sermons and heralding the excellencies of Christ to the best of our ability by the

Spirit. And may we put great effort into coming to church on the Lord's day to hear the preaching of the word, the word of Christ.

And then of course, may we give ourselves to life in the body of Christ, the local church, and trust that the

Lord will work through the means that he has ordained. And so this is in ways, John, to me an ordinary means of grace conversation.

And are the ordinary means just not enough for people? And I know there are going to be folks immediately objecting like,

Justin, you just don't get it, man. Like there's liberty for this. And is there not liberty to do these things outside of the local gathering?

And again, we have liberty to do things that are not inherently wrong, right? We have liberty unto righteousness.

We have liberty from the tyranny of sin and death and condemnation, and we're free in Jesus, and we've been set free from the bondage that we were in, right?

That's Christian freedom. But we ought not use our freedom to go and do things that are at best questionable and at worst could really lead us astray.

There are better uses of our time, I think, if you're going to press me on that matter. Yeah, I can't help but argue with you and say, or yeah, alongside of you, not with you, but alongside you and say,

I do believe that Scripture is sufficient for all of life, you know, I just don't think, like for instance, when

I say statements like, Paul has guaranteed our protection, our growth, and our health.

By certain means, and then he states them, being that it's the public preaching and teaching of his word, the public gathering of the saints for the edification of the word, and the public singing and confessing of sins, and burden bearing, and then the institution that Christ given us, the sacraments, right, and he says, all of these are designed for your strength, for your growth, and for your protection, right?

Justin, I will, man, I've just saying this lately, and it scares me the more

I think about it, but when Paul and Peter both warn us against the wiles of the devil and how powerful he is, and he comes and he projects himself as an angel of light, sometimes we think that we'll be able to identify the angel of light as if it's glaring right in front of us and we're just going to see it because we're a

Christian. That's not how they describe it. It says they're among you unaware, like they come in and they sound right, they look right.

But then it just takes the smallest adjustment, right? Again, I'll just go back to,

I am the law, right? It just takes the smallest adjustment, and then all of a sudden your desire and affection and where you are drawn to and where you find where you're being fed, it doesn't feel wrong, dirty, or demonic, but it's not accurate to what the text says.

And I'm here saying, if it's not accurate to the text, it's wrong and we shouldn't partake in it.

And that's hard to say, Justin, because again, I know there's so many people who've been so encouraged and benefited by this, but you need to step back and say,

I think this is where we're going to go to next, why are you being benefited from it?

Because I think you might be lacking something in your diet and you're trying to substitute it and you can't substitute it.

There's no substitute. There's no margin. There's no Splenda for this. I agree with you.

I mean, I'm just thinking about things, man, that even as you were saying what you were saying.

Well, let's go. I'm just, I'm just asking the question too. Like, what, what is it about us? I've already spoken to this. We're like, we have to know these things that have not been revealed to us.

We do this in so many areas theologically. And I continue to go back to Deuteronomy 29, 29, that the secret things belong to the

Lord and the things that have been revealed belong to us and our children. And we need to major on the things that are revealed and we trust the

Lord with the things that are not. And we do trust the sufficiency of the word that he's given us everything that we need to know. And we need to preach that, study that, live under that.

And then when we go beyond it, we're going to make mistakes. I can't get beyond that in my brain right now. And then the desire to go there.

When does it ever lead to anywhere good? But to your statements, people are perhaps trying to get something through the chosen that they're not getting where they should get that, you know, they're not getting where they're not getting it from where they should.

And I just botched that sentence. I hope you were able to track with me. We're tracking. Yeah. We should be getting what we need spiritually through our life in the local church.

Right. That's right. We should be getting what we need spiritually through the ordinary means of grace. Primarily the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments.

We should be getting what we need through the fellowship of the saints and life in the body.

And then, you know, in addition, if you want to do stuff outside of the local church gatherings and stuff, there are all kinds of things that you can do that are probably better than watching a show that depicts

Jesus in potentially unbiblical ways. Yeah. Again, I don't think that burden of proof is, or I should say,

I think that burden of proof lies with you in a way that's obvious, but I'm not trying to be uncharitable, you know? No.

Well, and this again, there's a theme kind of with a lot of what's going on with Theocast, and one of them is going to be,

Justin, is that we all believe in the power of the Bible, but then we limit it and we cut it off at its knees when it comes to actually giving us this power, and we either add things to it that the

Bible never states, or we remove it by ignoring it. And this is where, you know, why

I think the Reformation was so powerful because it did reclaim the power of the public teaching and preaching of the word, sacrament, prayer, fellowship, communion of the saints.

In a way that was understandable. Yeah. I mean, listen, when the Bible says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves as such as you were doing, that's a powerful statement.

Hebrews 13, 17, submit to those who rule over you or lead you, your rulers. Because why?

Because they are the ones who watch over your soul, right? So there's all these sections of scripture,

Ephesians 4, when the body functions properly, it builds itself up in love. There are all these powerful statements of how the word of God should be used.

But what has happened is three things have happened. Pietism crept in, revivalism destroyed it, and now

Christianity is all about individualism. And so people sit down and they watch the chosen and it kind of gives them this connection to Christ that they should have as they properly obey

God's word. And so they have a superficial connection that I think is not based on scripture at all and that connection they're feeling, that emotional connection they're feeling.

I was going to say it's a sentimental thing. It is very sentimental because I've heard people say that it just does not hurt well to see the human weakness inside of Christ.

And it humanizes Jesus, to which we ought to say with all due respect. And this is hilarious that we're going to be saying something like this because of the criticisms we receive.

It's like, well, you want to be affected by the humanity of Christ? Look to the scriptures, sit under good preaching, be a part of a faithful church, and then ponder.

There have been many good books written on the humanity of Christ. There are many passages in scripture that reveal it.

Why don't you meditate on some of that rather than watching the chosen? I have no problem saying that.

And I'm not saying that if you're watching the chosen, that you're clearly in sin and that you need to repent and all this kind of stuff.

I'm not going to go that far. But I would ask you a bunch of questions as to the value of it. And what are you getting there that you cannot get elsewhere that the

Lord has actually prescribed for you? Or I would rephrase it, what are you getting there that you should be getting elsewhere?

Well, a hundred percent, but I'm just even asking, like you're saying you're getting something from it. Well, could you get that elsewhere?

Should you, to your point, be getting that elsewhere? I think you should. And the question then is, why are you not? And so maybe you're sitting under anemic preaching.

Maybe you're not regularly attending a healthy church. Maybe you've not really given much time to contemplating the humanity of your

Savior. And that's not pietistic speak. That's legitimate because you're the one saying that this affects me and stirs me and I need this.

I agree that you do, but get it where the Lord has said you should. I can't help but think as well, last observation maybe from me in the regular show here.

You were talking about individualism and sentimentalism and all this stuff that's true of us today and how we sit on and watch a show and it just does something for us.

Bro, we're also talking about a generation of believers, and I don't mean to offend anyone. We're talking about a generation of believers that for the first time in the history of the church, think that we can attend church in our living room and think that we can sit and watch church.

And we went to church this morning in our pajamas. With all due respect, you did not. I mean, to go to church is to attend the assembly.

Ecclesia means assembly. You can't assemble without assembling. And so if you didn't go and be with the saints and sit bodily and physically there under the preaching and come to the table and sing and pray together, you did not go to church.

And so this needs to be said too, that we think this medium of me sitting by myself and consuming entertainment, that's what it is.

We think that that's worship, and it's not. Again, we're getting into all kinds of things here that we may need to discuss sometime because we abuse verses like Romans 12, 1, 2, that we need to present ourselves as living sacrifices and that everything we do is worship.

I mean, we abuse that and misunderstand it and misapply it. Because what we're doing, we do everything as under the

Lord. Amen. And when we gather on the Lord's day, assembled in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, covered in His blood and righteousness, that is a unique thing.

Justin Perdue Well, we can't unpack this here. We'll have to do it in SR.

And we're definitely going to do some more verses on it. This is why men who are trained, as 2

Timothy said, Timothy, what has been faithfully passed down to you, you need to pass down to men who will faithfully pass it down.

Meaning that to be trained in the proper use of the text and the gospel and doctrines is important.

This is why he says in Ephesians 4 that the elders are designed to protect you from this kind of stuff.

And so if you're not in a church, that you have good biblical elders who are well -trained and know what they're doing, then yeah, you're going to wander theologically, literally

Paul says, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful scenes.

Some of this stuff is very cunning. It's very clever. And I'm like, we don't need clever.

We need Christ. And we need Christ from the scripture, not anywhere else. Go ahead. I have a couple of comments, man.

This is maybe going to sound shock jockish and I'm not trying to be a jerk. I think that a lot of times people watch a show like The Chosen and they wrongly have a sense of virtue about what they're doing, or they have a wrong, like a misguided spiritual notion of, oh,

I'm just doing these really good things to supplement my faith or to bolster my faith, and they feel good about doing it, and I would strongly discourage that.

I don't think that you should think that way. I think, I mean, there's Christian music that we can listen to.

I mean, my goodness, if you want something to put on, to like put on some good songs. I mean, that's one thing, but even if we're just going to talk about entertainment only that would stir the heart,

I would suggest this. I think that there is more value and less danger, potentially, but certainly, potentially more value, certainly less danger in you listening to something or watching something that is secular, that is just dripping with common grace and is dripping with, like in Ecclesiastes 3 .11,

eternity is written into the hearts of men, but he's done it in such a way that man cannot understand what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Watch something, listen to something that is dripping with that stuff that's secular. I think that that may be potentially at least as beneficial and is definitely safer than watching something like The Chosen, and that sounds crazy to say, but I'm just thinking, for example,

John, I'm just going to go and throw it out there. I'll take the darts. When Paul Walker died, an actor that was in The Fast and the

Furious, there was a song written called See You Again, performed broadly in terms of the initial release by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth, and there is language in that song that is very emotive and evocative about this guy's death.

It's been a long day without you, my friend. I'll tell you all about it. When I see you again, there is all kinds of stuff that is in that song that tugs at our hearts that, to the

Christian, you're like, man, eternity has been written into our hearts. It's undeniable. It's undeniable.

How do we know we'd ever see each other again? Why would you ever assume such a thing? Maybe it's because we've been made with everlasting souls and made in the image of God.

You start to think about all of this stuff, and then you say, now, how would it ever go well for us in eternity? It's only through Christ.

There is a lot of value in listening to a secular song like that that provokes and evokes all kinds of thoughts and feelings, and it wasn't done by Christians for Christian purpose.

I would argue that's less dangerous than watching a potential misrepresentation of our Lord and Savior and then ascribing to that a lot more value than you even think you are.

Anyway, rant over. Well, welcome to what SR looks like, which is where we're going. Yeah, that was kind of SR -ish.

Well, take us over there, my friend. My goodness. Yeah, I should. I'm hosting this. You're hosting this one. All right, so we're done here.

We have said the things that we want to say in the regular part of the pod, and thank you for listening to us.

I know we went a little bit here, there, and everywhere. This, again, is not what we often discuss.

I feel like we're doing that a lot lately. Don't know. Anyway, I hope some of the things that we said were helpful and clarifying for you.

If we said anything that's offensive to you, we certainly didn't mean to offend you. If you have legitimate questions, let us know.

Send them to us. If you have legitimate rebuttal, you understand what

I mean. Legitimate rebuttal, send it to us. We'd happily consider these things. We might not be right about it, but this is where John and I stand.

He and I agree on this, and we'll just leave it there, and enough's been said. We're about to record another podcast called

Semper Reformanda. Semper Reformanda means always reforming. This is the second podcast that our members get access to.

Our members are simply people, guys, that have partnered with us financially and agree with the mission of Theocaste, have been helped by it, and want to help support it and see this message spread.

That's really what it's for. It's to unite and bring together people of like mind who have been affected by these truths.

There's an app that we have where we get to get on and interact with one another and encourage each other and ask each other questions. That's been very encouraging to me, and I'm appreciative of that community.

Just as an additional perk, if we even want to call it that, we record a second episode where we're a little bit more of family time -ish, like sitting around the fireplace with John and Justin with a drink in hand or something.

How would we talk about these things? It's kind of what we try to do. If you're interested in that, if you're interested in supporting

Theocaste and becoming a part of the Semper Reformanda community, go to our website, Theocaste .org. You'll find all the information that you need there.

We've got another podcast called Everyday Grace. If you're not listening to that yet, subscribe to that. Just sermon clips. I'm trying to encourage you in Christ on a daily basis.