January 8, 2018 Show with Dr. Scott Keith on “Being Dad: Father as a Picture of God’s Grace”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this eighth day of January 2017, and I'm delighted to have on the program today someone who is a first -time guest.

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His name is Dr. Scott Keith, who earned his doctorate at Foundation House, Oxford, England, under the sponsorship of the

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Graduate Theological Foundation, studying under James A. Nestingan, with a research focused on the doctrine of good works in the writings of Philip Melanchthon.

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He is the executive director of the 1517 Legacy Project, and he's the adjunct professor of theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California, and the co -host of the

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Thinking Fellows podcast, and a contributor to the Jagged Word and Christ Hold Fast blogs.

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Today he's going to be talking about a new book of his titled, Being Dad, Father as a

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Picture of God's Grace, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time,

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Dr. Scott Keith. Thank you, thank you for having me on the show. Let me give our listeners our email address if they would like to join us on the air with a question.

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The email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com,

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and please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if you are asking about a personal and private matter. Perhaps you have something very unflattering to say about your own father well -being raised, or perhaps you yourself lament that you were a horrible father yourself.

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Something of that nature that you want to discuss privately, or should I say anonymously, with Dr.

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Scott Keith. It won't be private because everybody who'll be listening to this program will hear it, but it will be anonymous if you should request that.

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But otherwise, if it's not personal and private, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, and the email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Well, Dr.

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Scott, I know that you are a Lutheran, but let us know something about the religious upbringing that you experienced, if any, and how our sovereign lord and his providence eventually drew you to himself, using providential occurrences in your life that made you finally truly recognize that you needed

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Jesus Christ as your Lord, God, and Savior, and how you pursued deeper studies within the

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Lutheran Church and so on. Well, my story is sort of bland in a lot of ways.

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Sometimes when people ask me when I became a Christian, I give the path Lutheran answer, which can be sort of staggering to some other traditions, that I was baptized when

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I was very young, and we would say in our theology that at that point, God claimed me as his, and he kept me in his hands from that point forward.

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I, like everyone else in life, sort of, you know, I had tumultuous times, and difficult times, and times when

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I struggled with sin more than others, sort of at those really predictable points in life, right?

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Teenage years, young college years, that type of thing. But I don't actually remember a time when

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I would say that Christ wasn't holding me firmly, even if I was trying to kick and scream my way out of his grasp.

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My father died when I was pretty young. I was around two years old at that time.

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We were living up in Central slash Northern California, a little town called

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Mountain View, right around the time that probably the tech boom was taking off in that area.

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And when my father died, my mother moved us back down to where she had grown up in a little town, at the time, little town called

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Palmdale, California, which is in the high desert. If any of your listeners are, you know, familiar with the aerospace industry or that type of thing,

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Palmdale is where the main Lockheed Skunk Works facility is, where like the SR -71 was developed.

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And so everybody in our town basically had a connection to the aircraft industry in some way, shape, or form, which is what my grandpa did.

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And we moved down. When we did that, my mom basically sort of became more involved in the tradition in which she was raised, which was

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Lutheran, and specifically LCMS Lutheran, that's Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, which is,

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I would say, in America, one of the more conservative branches of Lutheranism, very conservative, as a matter of fact.

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And of course, you have the Wisconsin Synod, which is easy, some would say even more strict and conservative than Missouri.

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And then you have the one that our friend Chris Roseborough is in, the American Association of Lutheran Churches.

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Yeah, which is in fellowship with the LCMS, so we're sort of on the same line there with Chris Roseborough's denomination.

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And my mom, you know, she sort of, I think she realized whether it was conscious or not that she was going to need some help raising my brother and I, and especially in this area of sort of religious education and instruction.

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And she enrolled both of us, even though it was very financially difficult for her, in the local

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Lutheran grammar school that was in the next town. And so in our tradition, we would say my catechesis, that's basically just my word we use to describe sort of initial religious instruction when you're a child.

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My catechesis was very strong at this church. We had a pastor there named Pastor Robert McDonald, who

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I think was probably one of the best teachers of the faith to the young that I've ever met in my life.

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And he, along with my other teachers at that school, instructed me, you know, in math and history and science, which

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I was always very bad at, but especially in the theology of our faith and the beliefs of our faith.

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And so I got, because my religion class was generally the one class

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I did well on, and I sort of had an inkling very early on that this might be something, some direction that I, my life would head, that the

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Lord was leading me in this direction. And, you know, from there, my life is kind of typical.

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I went to public high school and I struggled. I struggled both academically and religiously and in my faith while I was there.

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But an interesting thing happened my sophomore year of high school. I began working at a

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Lutheran camp that was in some of the mountains about two hours from our house in Palmdale, where I had attended as a child from a very young age on.

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And I would say it was that working at that camp from the time I was 16 until the time

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I was, you know, I actually even went back and worked there as a director after I graduated from college, that really formed me in my faith as a young adult and eventually as an adult.

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The men that took me under their spiritual wing there, even as I was struggling in my own faith when

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I was, you know, 15, 16, 17, they really, through God's direction and the work of the

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Holy Spirit through the Word that they proclaimed to me, brought me either back or closer to Himself and kept me there.

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In our way of thinking theologically, if you stay in the faith, it's because somebody or a group of people or multiple people have proclaimed

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God's Word over you throughout your life, and the Holy Spirit working through that Word has not only created faith in you and dwelled it in you, but has kept it in you.

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And it's an outside -in operation that happens through the lip, you know, speaking of other people, the

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Holy Spirit creates miracles. And these men did that for me in this sort of very formative time.

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I mean, men with names like Greg Rachey and Alan Nielsen and Pastor Larry up at the church on the hill, and I mean, they really were little

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Christ to me in very crucial times of my life. And I know that you did not enter into the

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Lutheran pastorate, but you are leading a parachurch organization, as I understand it, and you're also an adjunct professor of theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California.

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Tell us first about the 1517 Legacy Project, where you are the executive director.

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Yeah, so what we say is that we exist in order to proclaim the gospel of Christ Jesus to as many people as possible in as many ways as possible.

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And we do that through really several different, nine specific different projects that are either websites or a radio show or a podcast or a speaker's bureau or blog sites, where we really focus on what we would term the first -order proclamation of the gospel, that is that Christ Jesus, you know, not only died for the sins of the whole world, but he died for you, the individual sinner who's got a name, and he claims you in that name and makes you his own.

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And so we run a speaker's bureau, we do a radio show that broadcasts sermons that are preached locally, and we broadcast those.

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Let's just say the times early in the morning when people who perhaps most need to hear the gospel for the first time are just leaving establishments that close at around 2 a .m.,

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and some great stories have come out of that, of people who have called the pastor helpline at three o 'clock in the morning instead of, as they tell us, going home to take a bottle full of pills and call it good.

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It's been a wonderful ministry. We run two podcasts, the Thinking Fellows podcast, of which

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I'm a host, and the Virtue in the Wasteland podcast, which two of my colleagues are a host,

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Jeff Mallinson and Dr. Dan Van Voorhees. Several different blog sites, we have an academy, an online academy, where you can get instruction in the faith from people like Rob Rosenblatt, who's got a series up there on Galatians, we're adding more to that.

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We host conferences through an organization called Christ Hold Fast, and then a yearly national conference called

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Here We Still Stand, where we bring in as many top -notch speakers as we can and invite people to come join us down in sunny Southern California and San Diego every

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October as we celebrate various anniversaries of the Reformation. You know, a publishing house,

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I can't forget that. I mean, one of the main reasons we started was to put out some very good material in the form of the printed word and books, so our publishing house is

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New Reformation Publications. We're pretty busy over here at 1517. Great.

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Well, if anybody wants to look up more information about 1517, go to 1517legacy .com,

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1517legacy .com. And judging from your photograph, you are also involved in the

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Ultimate Fighting Championship, I believe? No. I did mention some of my struggles in my teenage years, and some of that could probably be appropriate.

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And you mentioned a name that I'm sure many of my listeners will recognize, Rod Rosenblatt, who at one time was a regular host, co -host with Michael Horton and Kim Riddlebarger on the

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White Horse Inn. Right, yeah. I mean, Rod, the other part of my story is when I finally made it to college and went out to Concordia University, Irvine, I met this professor named

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Rod Rosenblatt, and I liked him so much that even though I was a theology major, I actually ended up majoring in Rod Rosenblatt.

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And it's been a Rod Rosenblatt ride for me ever since, so I owe that man everything.

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Great. Praise God. I'm glad you owe something to a Calvinist. Well, he's a Lutheran, so there you go.

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Oh, I'm sorry. My train of thought wandered. I thought you were talking about Kim Riddlebarger.

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Rod Rosenblatt's the Lutheran, that's right. Yeah. Missouri Synod Lutheran. I do owe some things to Mike Horton, though, so I'll give you that.

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Well, we are going to be discussing today your book,

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Being Dad, Father as Picture of God's Grace, which is an excellent title. Tell us what was the motivation behind you writing this?

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There are a lot of books on fatherhood, many bad, some good, but there are even wonderful books written by Christians of varying theological stripes on the role of men as father in the world, and especially in the body of Christ.

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What was the motivation that made you realize that there is another approach to this that needs to be filled, another void that needs to be filled in regard to this subject?

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Well, if you recall me saying earlier, my own dad died when I was two years old.

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I actually don't have a memory of my father. That's how young I was, or that's how, you know, developmentally where I was when my dad died.

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But I also was somebody who knew all along from a very young age that one of the things

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I wanted to be most in my life was a dad. I did not have a lot of career ambitions very early on, but I knew,

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I always knew that being a father is something that I desire greatly. And then

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I got, so I did, I got married. I got married fairly young by today's standards, and we had our first child pretty early.

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His name's Caleb. He actually produces the podcast that I host, and went back to college.

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I had started some college when I was working up at the camp. Went back to college, went to the Concordia University, Irvine, like I said, and that's where I met

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Rod Rosenblatt, who was a professor of systematic theology and apologetics.

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I was a religion major, they called it, and it was a very small faculty, and I remember getting my my course schedule and not really knowing much about the faculty and saying to my wife, man,

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I hope I really like this Rod Rosenblatt guy because I have him for almost every class. And it turns out

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I love him. And one of the things that I learned from Rod, I mean, I had classes in theology and apologetics and philosophy from Rod, but what

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I learned most about Rod was what it really meant, or let me say it this way, what was really important about the calling of being a man and the calling of being a dad.

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And one of the reasons that struck me the most is because the fact that he was, that he saw his main calling as being a man and a father came out in everything that he said, but it came out in a way that I hadn't heard before.

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It wasn't a masculinity that was pompous or glow -hardish. It was actually sort of quiet and obscure, but very obvious still at the same time.

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His role as a father, as he described it, didn't come out as the ultimate disciplinarian in his home, which is what

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I heard from most my friends and about their fathers, actually Christian or otherwise.

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But it came out in his belief that his calling in the home was to be a picture of God's grace, and in so doing to point his children to God the

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Father, who is himself the ultimate picture of grace, because he is that from which grace flows.

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And it was staggeringly different than anything I had ever heard before. I'm not sure if everybody in every class picked up on it in the same way

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I did, because I was really, to my recollection, the only person in every class that was already married and had a kid.

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But it very much hit me every time I heard it. And then in 2000,

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I want to say 2007 maybe, 2006, Rob was invited out to the

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Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. And he gave a lecture that was recorded there that was called

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When Good Fathers Die, It's Always Too Soon. People can find that lecture at 1517legacy .com

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if they just search Rod Rosenblatt or When Good Fathers Die. And I listened to that, and my friend

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Aaron Peterson sent it to me, and I listened to it. And basically what that lecture was, was a two -hour summary of what

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I had learned from Rod for three years at Concordia about being a man and being a dad. And it gave me justification, and it was something that I could point to at that point in time and say, this is what

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I've been trying to do all these years with our kids, with my kids, even with kids that I worked with.

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And it's hard to explain, right? But here it is. He said it. He spent two hours saying it.

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Listened to it. And it was really a monumental thing for me. And I'm going to read a commendation for you book by David Zoll, Director of Mockingbird Ministries.

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David was a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the old program broadcasting out of Long Island, New York, WNYG, and also

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WGBB in Babylon, Long Island. David discussed with me on March 23rd of 2009,

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Rediscovering Anglicanism's Reformation Heritage. But I look forward to having

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David back on the program at some point. He's a mutual friend of the pastor of the

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St. George's Episcopal Church in New York City, which is a very historic Episcopal church that has remained faithful to its biblical roots.

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It is very unlike your average liberal or even apostate Episcopal church, although I believe it did go through a season of that.

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But Reverend Jacob Smith is a mutual friend of both David Zoll and myself. But David Zoll said, this book deals with the way fathers and the subject of fatherhood are treated in modern culture.

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Dr. Keith brings his experience with family, students, great mentors, and friends to bear on a subject which is crying out for attention.

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Equally, he brings his Christian faith, a scholarly eye for detail, and an ear for story along the journey and works with the reader to navigate a path to a better country where the father blesses his children and is honored.

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What you hold in your hands is more than just a book. It is magic. Dr. Keith understands the increasingly countercultural yet vital truth that there is no force in a child's life more potent than that of a good father, the kind that points to the goodness of our heavenly father.

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Packed with all the manner of everyday insights and amazing stories, not to mention theological wisdom, whether you had a good father or not, so good father, or no father at all, being dad will leave you in a puddle on the floor.

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Wow, that's a very powerful endorsement. Yeah, Dave's a great guy. I was thankful to him for even reading the book, let alone writing such a nice endorsement.

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Yeah, well, send him my regards. It's been such a long time. I don't know if he remembers me. I have a feeling he does, but it's been almost a decade since I've spoken with him.

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Wow. But let me go right away to a questioner in Slovenia.

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He was sent in an email with a question for you. Dear brothers Chris and Scott, please address the concern of allowing the father -son relationship to get stuck in surface level interests such as only being sports fans or sharing a hobby.

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How does one prevent these otherwise good and neutral activities from keeping fathers and sons from developing deeper interaction through and beyond them?

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That's a really good question. That's a great question, actually. One of the things I say at the beginning of the book is one of the things that distinguishes being dad from a lot of books is it's not a handbook.

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I don't do a lot of do this and everything's going to be okay, don't do this and everything's going to fall apart.

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What I try to do in the book is sort of paint pictures, biblical pictures, of what the scriptures present to us as what a dad looks like and admittedly drawing primarily on the parable of the prodigal son where Christ paints the picture of God the father based on a very forgiving father.

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The heroes of his time could relate if even they related to him by being mad at him, which I think they did.

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His question about this idea of surface level interest in fathering generally, that's a real concern.

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One of my biggest apprehensions about most of the modern day father's movements, and I want to clarify and say

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I'm very glad these movements exist because we're hopefully coming out of a spell where fatherhood was disregarded for a little over a decade, maybe 20 -25 years as even being important, and there's a bit of a father's movement sort of re -emerging right now in the area where we listen to the radio, the greater

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Los Angeles Basin area. There's a dad cast show that kind of has gone crazy and I've listened to it a couple times because obviously it's my hobby horse, but my biggest criticism of it is that I think it sort of promotes this sort of surface level interest from father to son that your listener is speaking of, and I worry that when we sort of have so much of our children's time so uber structured that it's inevitable that with both of your children, your sons and your daughters, that for parents generally and fathers specifically, all that's left is surface level time of making sure they get to soccer practice or football practice and then watching football games with them because that's the only common interest you have when

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I think what's really important in the lives of children is just for them to know that their father is there and that their father loves them and to cultivate whatever relationship they have based on an assurity and a security that their father will never be gone.

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You know, other than that death is the only thing that could take them away from their child, but other than that, there's nothing that that child could do that would drive the father away from them in their life.

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I mean, that's the type of thing that children need. They need to know that their father is there for them and not that it's the other way around, that we sort of have this mutual relationship based only on our common interest, and if those common interests were to change, who knows?

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That's not the basis of the relationship. The basis of the relationship is the father's calling into the life of the children to be there and to be that picture of God's grace and that mouthpiece of grace to them, and along with that, of course, comes discipline at times and both the words of law and the words of gospel into the life of the children, but it's not primarily a calling to simply promote their extracurricular interests, and I think that many of the modern father's movements that are going on today do focus a lot on that, and I think it really keeps it to surface level.

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The need for fathers in the lives of their children is much deeper than just, we both like soccer.

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And, of course, although soccer is a very popular sport for children to play in all grades of education, it seems to be dismally unpopular on the television in America.

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Everywhere else in the world, it is king, but here, soccer is... If you know a restaurant is filled with people watching a television set during a soccer championship, you know that most of those people are first or second generation immigrants.

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Yeah, or here as visitors or something like that. Yeah. Well, thank you,

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Joe in Slovenia. Guess what? You have won a free copy of the book that we are talking about today,

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Being Dad, Father as a Picture of God's Grace, by our guest Scott Keith. Compliments of the folks at the 1517

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Legacy Project. So thank you for giving us an American address so that the

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Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship that out to you free of charge without much of a money hit on their own pocketbook.

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Thank you very much for that and keep in touch with your daughter in Georgia so that you know that that book arrived to your attention.

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And keep listening in Slovenia and keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and beyond.

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You speak in your book... In because I don't want to cut you off in mid -sentence.

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But when we return, I want you to talk about... Basically, it is the first chapter in your book, quite a compelling title,

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Fatherhood at the Core of the Universe. If you could bring that up when we return from our break.

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If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

28:55

Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if the personal involves a private and intimate matter.

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Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And you can also call cvbbs .com

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And you can also tell them verbally about the IRON coupon code, I -R -O -N, by calling 800 -656 -0231.

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800 -656 -0231 if they are still manning the phone when you call. We are back now with our guest today,

37:56

Dr. Scott Keith, who is a Lutheran author and Executive Director of the 1517

38:03

Legacy Project. We are discussing his book, Being Dad, Father as a Picture of God's Grace.

38:09

If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

38:15

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And before we go to any of our other listeners who have written in with their own questions for you,

38:22

I'd like you to address the really compelling title of your first chapter, Fatherhood at the

38:28

Core of the Universe. Well, that's really a line that I stole from C .S.

38:34

Lewis, who used it when referring to one of his favorite authors, George MacDonald.

38:43

It's funny, if your listeners don't really know, I'm sure they're aware of C .S. Lewis through the

38:49

Chronicles of Narnia and probably through mere Christianity. But C .S. Lewis, for a good portion of his life, was not a

38:55

Christian. And he came to Christianity a couple of ways. One, through reading some very influential authors.

39:02

One of them was George MacDonald. In fact, in his novel,

39:07

The Great Divorce, the guide that C .S. Lewis has through what is probably purgatory is

39:14

George MacDonald, and he brings him to the faith. But also through some conversation with friends, people like J .R

39:21

.R. Tolkien. But when Lewis came to the faith, and he very much attributed a lot of that to George MacDonald, he quoted a line from MacDonald in saying that one of the things that made him such a great

39:37

Christian was that he knew from his own father, that's George MacDonald's own father, that fatherhood must be at the core of the universe.

39:46

And so I titled the first chapter that to sort of highlight the idea that fathers are necessary.

39:55

They're so necessary that we could accurately say that the idea of fatherhood is at the core of the universe.

40:03

And without going into all the stats, which I do some in the book, sometimes when I'm teaching on being dad,

40:09

I'll ask it to the audience this way. I'll say, if we don't understand why having good fathers in homes is so important, let me ask a few questions.

40:22

The first one I'll ask is, how do we expect our boys to grow up to be good, faithful, kind, gracious men if they never see men or have men in their lives who fit that bid whom they could model?

40:42

Then I'll ask, how would we ever expect our boys to grow up to be good, kind, strong, gracious, competent fathers if they never see or never have in their lives men and fathers who fit that bill?

41:03

And then I'll ask a final question, and I'll sort of preface it this way. I'll say, listen, every

41:10

Sunday, if you're sort of a faithful, practicing Christian, every Sunday, or as many

41:15

Sundays as you can, you probably bring your entire family to church, and they sit down on the chairs, or they sit down in the pew, and they spend an hour or two hours, or whatever your tradition handles as far as that goes, and they hear messages about why they should believe in and trust in a man who we call

41:40

God the Father who sent another man who we call his only begotten son to save them from sin, death, and the power of the devil if they've never seen a man who is good and gracious and kind and forgiving who would do anything like that?

42:02

Most of your listeners probably aren't aware that 42 % of children in America grow up in a home where there is no stable father influence, either biological or otherwise.

42:14

So many, many children just in America grow up having never seen or experienced a man who is good and kind and gracious and forgiving and who looks out for them and protects them and takes care of them, and yet if we're

42:34

Christian, we still ask those children to rely as their only hope for salvation in life on a man,

42:44

God the Father, and his son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The fatherhood is at the core of the universe, and it comes to us from God the

42:53

Father and his love for us that he sent his only son to die for us, and that if we believe in him, we shall have eternal life, and it's expressed in the everyday lives of people everywhere through good men and good fathers doing what they can and failing often and being forgiven for those failures, hopefully, it's certainly in Christ, but everyday men going about their everyday lives not even knowing it, getting up and just doing what they do as good husbands and good fathers and good men to be that picture, that foggy picture of God's grace in the lives of their children and probably other people that they don't even know.

43:39

So in that way, fatherhood is at the core of the universe. We have Bibi in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asks, do you think that one of the reasons the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket is that the role of the man as prophet, priest, and king in his own household has been totally diminished and often reversed where the woman is the head of the household and there is no gender role distinction at all existing, even in many churches that profess to believe in the inerrancy of scripture?

44:16

Would it be simple enough to say yes? I mean,

44:22

I sometimes want to be careful about this kind of thing because things are certainly bad now in our age, but things have certainly been bad since the fall into sin.

44:34

And many of the things that we're seeing now are re -expressions of awful behaviors, awful expressions of our own simpleness that have come up at various times in the past, too.

44:47

I would say that for us, right, in our lifespan, and even if even within sort of, let's say this way, our recent historical memory, maybe dating back a few hundred years, we are in a very odd time right now, and it's a time that's been falling upon us probably since the end of World War I, maybe arguably since the end of World War II, where there's an extreme social shift that has kind of gone along like a locomotive, right?

45:18

It's not very, it's not super fast, but it's very heavy and the farther it goes, the more it picks up steam and the more it picks up speed.

45:26

And so it started out slow and it seems to be moving very quickly right now. And the modern expression of that is certainly a lack of gender identity, a lack of gender roles that are traditionally, historically, and I'd say ontologically and theologically very important.

45:47

You know, God created them male and female, and he said, for this reason, a husband shall leave his father and mother, and he shall cleave to his wife, and two shall become one flesh.

45:57

And those two, as they become one flesh, will make other little fleshes, who then go out into the world.

46:04

And that's one of the ways that we propagate not only our race, but also our faith, right?

46:09

We have these children and we bring them into the fold of the faith, and we nurture them in that faith, and they're brought up in the faith.

46:16

One of the most tragic things that's happened for the Church, as men have been marginalized, not only in society, but in the

46:27

Church, is that there's real data, even from pagans, that will tell us that children tend to follow the father, as far as belief goes, much more than the mother.

46:43

If the father actually lives by, or tries to, to the best of his ability, the model that's set up for him in the

46:52

Scripture, as the spiritual head of his house, there's a very high likelihood that his children will stay in the faith, and that if he doesn't, those numbers get to be a little more precarious, and we start to worry.

47:04

But it's very clear, even from pagan sociological data, that fathers are the main faith influence in the lives of children, and when they're gone, the situation is not hopeless, but it's certainly harder to determine, and harder to figure out what's actually going to happen.

47:21

And so, yes, I mean, we have, in our society specifically, we have destroyed the role of man in the lives of society, and one of the ways that started was by this attack on the need for good fathers in the home.

47:36

I cannot stand the way fathers are portrayed in the media. I mean, I don't have TV anymore.

47:42

I haven't for six years, and one of the reasons I don't is, I'm not, I'm a

47:47

Lutheran, so I'm okay with, you know, some of the swearing and other things around TV that some people might balk at, but I am opposed to the way men are presented in the media, and I'm opposed to it because it portrays pictures of men and fathers where they fit into one of only a couple models.

48:07

They're either useless and incapable, or don't care, and even if they are capable, remove themselves from the situation because they're willing to accept the reality that the woman and the mother is telling them that they're not needed.

48:20

The third option is that they're presented, if they are, it's funny to me, in modern TV, it seems like if a father is a positive figure in the lives of the children, he's homosexual, and he's pairing children with another man, and I think, how upside down could we have this?

48:39

We can have this as upside down as we do, and it's why some of the sociological data, even in the church, plays out the way it does, with the number of millennials and nuns leaving the church.

48:50

I think there's a direct correlation to that, and the lack of men in the lives of children, the lack of fathers in the lives of their children, and the active, the lack of active participation of part of men in the church.

49:03

Well, thank you, B .B., for the excellent question, and guess what? You have also won a free copy of Being Dad, Father as a

49:12

Picture of God's Grace by our guest, Dr. Scott Keith, so please make sure we have your full mailing address in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, so that CVBBS .com

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can ship that book out to you at no charge to you or to us, and once again, we thank the 1517

49:28

Legacy Project for providing these free copies of the book. We have

49:33

RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, I agree with everything you said, but can we not also lay the fault at the feet of the old -fashioned dad, even who might have been viewed as the head of his household, but because of his addiction to work and other things, may have been absent far too long and far too often from family life, which led to the parents of today, which have this view that is very often matriarchal?

50:07

Again, can I say, would it be simple enough to say yes? I mean, the reality is that, like I said, there's been no really time in the world where things have been perfect, right?

50:18

And so we can go back to this Leave it to Beaver picture of the 50s or whatever, but the reality there, too, is there's a lot of problems there.

50:26

You know, dad is maybe physically present in that scenario, but emotionally absent.

50:33

Dad sees his role only as provider, and that's how he takes care of his family and his children, and so he focuses 100 % on work.

50:41

I mean, the reality is, kind of like I said before, is if you see your vocation as father, as being the mouthpiece of grace to your family, your wife and your children, and that's why

50:53

God puts you in this thing that we call a family, that's primary, and you're going to do other things, right? You're going to provide, you're going to protect, you're going to care for, you're going to discipline, you're going to do other things, but as far as primary vocation goes, you're primarily called to that family to speak forgiveness, the forgiveness of Christ Jesus to them, and to actually forgive them in the name of Christ Jesus, and all those other things that you do, provider, protector, discipliner, they're spokes on the wheel, but they're not the hub.

51:27

Christ is the hub, and your expression of Christ to your family through the words forgiveness given to us in the scriptures is what holds the whole thing together.

51:34

If you understand that, you know, your children will know that they may mess up here, they may mess up there, they may have been disciplined here, they may have been disciplined there, they may not, you know, they may disappoint you, they may anger you, but they will know that you always forgive them on account of Christ's forgiveness to you, and they will know that at the end of the day, things are going to be okay because what

51:54

Christ has done for them, and not because of anything they earned or didn't earn or did well or did badly, but because Christ has done it for them, and they hear that from you, and that that's why you're called there, that is the life -changing message of the father in the home.

52:10

It can be life -changing message that the mother gives too, I'm not trying to downplay that, but I speak to fathers in this primarily, and as a father primarily, and that is the key.

52:20

So yes, it's not an answer just to be involved and work so much that all you have to do is time to take them to soccer practice or whatever, it's more than that, and it's more obscure than that, and it's better than that.

52:34

Well thank you RJ in White Plains, New York, you've also won a free copy of Being Dad, Father as a

52:40

Picture of God's Grace by our guest Dr. Scott Keith, so please give us your full mailing address in White Plains, New York, so cvbbs .com

52:50

can mail that out to you free of charge. We're going to our midway break right now, it's a longer break than normal because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida requires a 12 minute break between our two hours, so please be patient with us as we go to our midway break, and take this time to write your questions for Dr.

53:10

Scott Keith on Being Dad, Father as a Picture of God's Grace, and again our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

53:20

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Before I go to the break, I'm going to read a question for you that is not on the topic, and perhaps you could answer it when we return from the break.

53:32

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania who says,

53:37

I heard in your introduction that you focused your research on the doctrine of good works and the writings of Philip Melanchthon.

53:46

I have heard Chris Rosebrough and other Lutherans on your program, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, who have denounced

53:54

Philip Melanchthon as an unfortunate figure in the history of Lutheranism, taking the theology of the church farther away from what

54:01

Luther intended, and of course more importantly from what the scriptures intended. Can your guest comment on this, and I'll have you comment on that when we return from the break.

54:11

If anybody else would like to join us, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away,

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God willing we will be right back after these messages from our sponsors. So I look forward to hearing from you then with your own questions for Dr.

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Scott Keith. Have you been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio?

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am

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I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

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that's providencebaptistchurchma .org, or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor

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Solid -ground -books .com, Mike Gaydosh, the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, has reported back to me on numerous occasions how thrilled he is with the number of Iron Sharpens Iron listeners who are purchasing books from that fine publishing ministry.

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And they have really been pulled by you, by God's grace, out of a really serious financial slump.

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And because of my urgent pleas for help to you, for Solid Ground Christian Books being a sponsor of this program, it seems that many of you have come to the rescue and have purchased many books.

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And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that. In fact, if you want to make the benchmark of $50 worth of purchases from my other sponsor,

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CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, in order to win that free book,

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make a list of the books that you want to order from them that they publish, and then go to CVBBS .com,

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the one who has the offer that they currently have, and you will be able to order those books from CVBBS .com

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because CVBBS .com is a book distributor and Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher.

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So you can kill two birds with one stone and make two of my advertisers very happy by purchasing

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Solid Ground Christian Books' titles from CVBBS .com. Before I return to my guest,

01:05:32

Dr. Scott Keith, Executive Director of the 1517 Legacy Project and also

01:05:39

Adjunct Professor of Theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California, I just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

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First of all, in just about a week or so, the

01:05:52

G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia. I will be there, God willing, from the 17th of January through the 20th at the

01:06:00

Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, and if you're wondering what the

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G3 stands for, it's Grace, Gospel, and Glory. The theme this year will be Knowing God, a

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Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. Speakers include Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .P.

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Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Methenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, Justin Peters, and Stephen Nichols.

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If you'd like to register for an entrance into the conference or even to man your own exhibitor's booth, just as Iron Trap and Zion will be doing at that conference, go to g3conference .com,

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g3conference .com, and please tell everyone there that you heard about the

01:06:52

G3 Conference from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trap and Zion Radio. And last but not least comes the most uncomfortable time of my program, and that's to rattle my tin cup and beg you for money.

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Just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line.

01:10:15

Now we are back to our guest today, Dr. Scott Keith, Executive Director of the 1517

01:10:24

Legacy Project, Adjunct Professor of Theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California, co -host of the

01:10:33

Thinking Fellows podcast and contributor to the Jagged Word and Christ Hold Fast blogs, and we are talking today about his book,

01:10:41

Being Dad, Father as a Picture of God's Grace. As you may recall, before the break,

01:10:47

Dr. Scott, one of our listeners, Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, was wondering if you agreed with other

01:10:54

Lutherans I have interviewed, such as Chris Roseborough and others, who have not had very kind things to say about Philip Melanchthon.

01:11:03

In fact, I have even heard from Calvinists that Philip Melanchthon drew the

01:11:09

Lutheran church farther away from agreement with Calvinism, especially in regard to Luther's masterpiece,

01:11:16

The Bondage of the Will, that was at the center of the Great Reformation debate that he had with Erasmus, but could you respond to that?

01:11:26

Sure. I know it's not on the topic, but it is an interesting side.

01:11:32

Yeah, so one of the things, not to disparage my good friend Chris Roseborough or anything like that, but I would say that most people who disparage

01:11:42

Philip Melanchthon haven't read a lot of Philip Melanchthon. He has had a contentious picture of himself painted in Lutheran circles all along, mainly because he himself, whether he was right or wrong, was sort of a character that seemed to draw to himself a lot of controversy, and sometimes he brought that controversy on himself when he was on the side of the angels, and sometimes that controversy fell upon him when he was probably more debatable whether he was on the side of the angels or not.

01:12:18

The reality is that he, within the Lutheran Reformation, he played a much different role than did

01:12:25

Luther, and that role that he played sort of put him in positions where he was called upon to compromise in an era where compromise did not make one very popular.

01:12:40

And so, as people sort of read the history books concerning him and different commentators about him,

01:12:48

I mean, there's not been a very good biography of Melanchthon written in a very long time, and so pictures are painted of him oftentimes that are negative, but the reality of Philip Melanchthon was that he was, for the listeners that don't know, he was basically a colleague of Martin Luther at the

01:13:07

University of Wittenberg. He worked there with Luther until Luther's death, and then after Luther's death for about another 15 years at the university.

01:13:19

He was not a theologian by initial training. He was a scholar of Hebrew and of Greek and of Latin and of classical literature, and he came to the

01:13:30

University of Wittenberg originally as an instructor of Greek and ended up moving into teaching theology by the means of taking what was at that time called a

01:13:42

Bachelor's of Divinity degree from the University of Wittenberg, which gave him the right to teach

01:13:49

Greek and theology. He was so smart that by the end of his career, he had ended up teaching courses on Greek philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, unfortunately astrology, history.

01:14:03

He was one of the primary influences early on in sort of our modern views of studying history, obviously philosophy, classical literature.

01:14:14

He was a polyglot. He was incredibly smart, and sometimes to his detriment, mainly because Luther's movements were very much restricted after the

01:14:27

Diet of Worms in 1521, Melanchthon was called on by his Elector Prince and others to sort of take the gospel as he understood it as taught by Luther and others to other regions of what we now call

01:14:42

Germany in order to make an alliance on behalf of the gospel. That alliance eventually became known as the

01:14:48

Small Caldic League, but in doing that, he certainly made some compromises that made people uncomfortable.

01:14:56

I would say that he was, until his death, a faithful teacher of the gospel of Christ Jesus, who, when he messed up, recanted and apologized, but did not receive that much forgiveness in our tradition from his own time until now, even.

01:15:18

Wow, okay, well that's good to know. That clarification will be helpful. Thank you.

01:15:23

I do, I have a, not that I'm trying to plug another book, but if people actually do want to know about Melanchthon, I did write a little booklet called

01:15:30

Meeting Melanchthon. It's a very easy read that people can get at 1517. All right, great.

01:15:37

Well, thank you Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and guess what? You've also won a free copy of Being Dad, Father as a

01:15:43

Picture of God's Grace by our guest Dr. Scott Keith, and that will be mailed to you by our friends at CVBBS .com,

01:15:52

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, so please give us your full mailing address so they can mail that out to you as soon as possible.

01:16:00

And let's go on to the next chapter of your book to get an overview of two lost and found sons and the dad in the middle.

01:16:10

Yeah, basically I rely, or I stand on the shoulders of giants in that chapter and do my best to exposit the parable of the prodigal son as told by Christ.

01:16:22

I think it's a parable that we've all probably heard more times than we can actually remember, but that we've at the same time probably never heard as Christ preached it to his audience.

01:16:35

I mean, the reality is both in his own time and in ours that when we hear that parable, we hear it with sinful ears and take from it what we want, not necessarily what

01:16:52

Christ was trying to get across. In his time, the message of the prodigal son would have been so countercultural that there are commentators who say in their commentaries that his original audience most likely actually picked up stones to kill him upon speaking some of the first lines of the parable that describe the younger son demanding of his father an inheritance to which he had no right.

01:17:22

So, in the chapter, I do my best to exposit that and tell the story of a man who had two sons.

01:17:30

I have two sons myself, so this is sort of easy for me to relate to. His two sons are much like many of us who have two sons, much like them, an older and a younger.

01:17:42

The older one's described as being quite responsible and always around and living up to his duties and his obligations.

01:17:49

The younger one is described in not such a positive light and is demanding and petulant and he demands of his father more than he should.

01:18:02

And then we have this odd character of a father who does the exact opposite of what any of us would ever expect him to do.

01:18:11

When the younger son demands that he get half of quote -unquote what is his at his father's death, i .e.

01:18:19

his inheritance, the father gives it to him. I mean, in no time, in Christ's time nor in our time, would we expect that that's the right move on the part of the father, right?

01:18:33

One of our sons comes to us and says, I wish you were dead. Give me half of everything that's yours.

01:18:40

And the father says, okay. What we have here in the story of the prodigal son is the story of a father who is really not what we expect.

01:18:53

He's so loving, he's so kind, and he's so forgiving that he gives of himself.

01:18:59

And even in the story as the son departs and goes off into the far off land and eventually loses everything and becomes destitute and in great need, the father, and he returns to the father, the father at the end of the story seems to be waiting for him the whole time, sitting out, waiting for his son's return.

01:19:24

And when the son does return full of his own, in many ways, sinful confession, the father wants him back into the family so badly that he doesn't even allow the son the time to get the confession off his chest, but immediately begins forgiving and bringing him back on the fold, into the fold.

01:19:45

It's a truly wonderful story. It's a truly wonderful parable, but I think it's one that we don't necessarily hear as a story of forgiveness, as a story of a

01:19:58

God who, from whom we could expect really nothing, who gives us everything, and then even when we blow the everything, continues to give and forgive.

01:20:13

And we do have a listener. Let's see, we have Ronald in eastern

01:20:19

Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, I have heard that this parable can also be a picture of the

01:20:30

Gentiles being ushered into the church, which provoked the

01:20:36

Judaizers and other Jews to anger and jealousy, because that would be a picture of the brother who had remained with his father and was upset that the wandering son that squandered all was treated with such a royal treatment and forgiveness when returning home to his father.

01:20:57

Do you agree with this analogy? Yeah, I think it could definitely be seen that way.

01:21:03

But here's the thing, no matter how you see, if you see this, when you read this parable, one of the things

01:21:08

I think you have to realize is that we always want to say, and in a parable we always want to say, oh, this is this, and that is that, and that can often be a mistake unless Christ expresses that to us, you know, as he's teaching on the parable after having taught the parable.

01:21:24

In the case of the parable of the prodigal son, it's quite obvious that the father, you know, really

01:21:30

Christ is telling us about the love of the father, capital T, capital

01:21:36

F, by telling us a parable about a good earthly father and what that actually looks like.

01:21:43

In so doing, what you get is, as he describes a good earthly father, he actually describes someone that we would never consider a good earthly father.

01:21:57

We would expect that father, if he were to be good to discipline and to say no and to train in uprightness and to point him on the right path, not let him go the wrong path, and then forgive him for having, not really enable him to go the wrong path, and then forgive him for going in the wrong path.

01:22:12

Even at the end of the parable, when the older son, the one who has always been with him, messes up and refuses to come into the to the party, really that the older son's probably paying for, that the father doesn't do what we expect.

01:22:27

I mean, I read that, and I expect that as the older son's being so snarky to him at the end of the parable, that this is finally the time that the father's going to lose control and just let loose on him, and he doesn't.

01:22:38

You know, he applies just enough law, just enough gospel to remind the older son that he's always going to be there, that he's always been with him, and that everything he has belongs to him, and that the only important thing now is that a dead man, his younger brother, has been brought to life, and it's time to celebrate.

01:22:56

Now sure, this could be the Jews and the Gentiles, right? The Jews as the older brother, the Gentiles as the younger brother, but really this is us.

01:23:05

I mean, the only, and this is Christ for us. I mean, we are the older brother, we are the younger brother, and Christ becomes both the older brother and the younger brother, so that God will forgive us as we're on our path back with our useless confession, that Christ takes on himself and he gives to us all of the good that is him while taking on all the bad that's us, and that's the parable.

01:23:28

We are both the older brother and the younger brother. God the Father forgives us on account of Christ, who is the fattened calf sacrificed,

01:23:36

I think, at the end of the tale. Well, thank you so much, Ronald, in Eastern Suffolk County. You've also won a free copy of Being Dad, Father as Picture of God's Grace by our guest,

01:23:47

Dr. Scott Keith. Please make sure we have your full mailing address, so cvbbs .com can ship that out to you.

01:23:55

Well, let's move on to a summary or an overview of the third chapter in this book, and, by the way,

01:24:05

I'm going to give our email address again. It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, if anybody wants to join us, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

01:24:14

The Lost Art of Masculinity, No Need for Masculine Fathers, or,

01:24:19

I'm sorry, I read that wrong, The Need for Masculine Fathers. The Lost Art of Masculinity, The Need for Masculine Fathers.

01:24:27

That's quite an interesting subject that is raging a lot today in different Christian circles.

01:24:36

There are a lot of people that are saying that we have become in a feminized culture, not only here in America, but in many parts of Europe, if not the entire globe.

01:24:49

The role of man has been blurred with that of the woman, and there is more of a unisex appeal for gender activity.

01:25:04

So, if you could, let us know about that. Yeah, if we can agree, and I think we can, that there is sort of a father crisis going on, not only in our country, but in the world.

01:25:17

In not as involved as they ought to be in the lives of their children. Christian fathers, even as heads of the household, being the spiritual mouthpieces of God's grace to their children, all these things have diminished over the last several years, and there are sort of horrifying consequences that are coming along with that, both sociologically, spiritually, and theologically.

01:25:40

I think where this begins is the idea that it's just simply not okay to be a man in our society, and if it's not okay to be a man in our society, obviously it's not okay to be a father and or try to be a good one and or be proud that God has called you into this vocation of being a father and then giving him the glory for actually bringing him to this place where you have a family and a calling that he's given you.

01:26:06

So, if that's all lost, I mean, if we start at the beginning where it's not okay to be a man, it's not okay to be masculine, the natural consequence is going to come into fathering, the lack of desire to become a father, which is apparent.

01:26:18

I mean, some of the most recent studies tell us that, quote -unquote, millennial young men, by big, big percentages, don't really desire to be parents.

01:26:31

They don't desire to be a father, and these young adults are having children later and having fewer children, and fewer of them are having children, and most often this has to do with the fact that I think being a man's not honored, thus being a father is not honored, and so in this loss art of masculinity,

01:26:52

I try to describe a masculinity that, again, is not what we might expect it to be.

01:26:58

I mean, if we get pictures of masculinity given to us in our modern society, in our modern culture, it's, you know, sort of a macho guy in a leather jacket with big muscles riding a motorcycle, an uber -deep voice who can kick anybody's butt, and that kind of thing.

01:27:16

Kind of like what you look like. Well, thank you, actually.

01:27:27

But what is the actual picture of masculinity that's given to us by God?

01:27:33

What is the actual calling and vocation of being a man? And what I try to describe in the book is that it's a lost art because we've lost our focus.

01:27:42

Our focus has gone to the physical. Our focus has gone to expressions of power, and really our focus ought to be on what it means to be called into a community or a family, and what your message as a man of grace and forgiveness and kindness and empathy and compassion provides to that community, even when you say nothing, sort of by your quiet demeanor and the obscure touch on the shoulder or the words that are so hard to pick up sometimes that we miss it when one man tells another man, usually a younger man, hey,

01:28:22

I'm proud of you for doing that. I couldn't do that. Or tells their children, you know, that was a really horrible thing you did, and I forgive you.

01:28:31

And those things are powerful. They're so powerful that they become, I think, something that's called in Latin an analogia entis, or an analogy of being.

01:28:42

You know, again, this goes back to the first hour when we discussed, we bring children into the community of faith, and we ask them to believe in seemingly impossible things and seemingly impossible people, and we can provide them pictures that are not the same as that, right?

01:28:59

A good dad will never be the same picture as God the Father, but he's also not completely unlike that either, and we can provide them these pictures, these foggy pictures, and it makes it easier for them to believe that these miraculous things that we talk about given to us by a good and gracious man who loves us,

01:29:21

God the Father, that it's actually true, that it's actually worth holding on to and clinging to and relying solely on Christ as our only hope for salvation, because we can rely here on somebody too as our only hope at times.

01:29:36

Powerful stuff, stuff we need to hear more. That's the lost art of masculinity. And I want to touch on something about that when we return.

01:29:44

This is our final break, and this will be a much quicker break than our previous break. If you want to ask a question of Dr.

01:29:51

Scott Keith, do it now or forever hold your peace, because we are rapidly running out of time. Send it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:29:59

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01:30:06

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01:30:12

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01:36:13

Scott Keith, who is discussing his book on fatherhood, Being Dead, Father as a

01:36:19

Picture of God's Grace. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:36:26

chrisarnson at gmail .com. One thing that, as you are fully aware, Dr.

01:36:31

Scott, that's very disturbing, and this is not something really new. This has been going on for decades.

01:36:37

It might even be something that has been going on for centuries. But in fact, I'm certain it's been going on for centuries, but it's just been more magnified, perhaps, in our modern day, is that the person that the average man or woman in the public would view as the truly masculine person sometimes would fit a description that is the antithesis of what a godly man is in the

01:37:06

Bible. Sometimes they overlap, courage and things like that, being willing to sacrifice even your own life.

01:37:16

There are many things that your average person in society would agree with even the Bible -believing

01:37:21

Christian on in regard to manhood, but you have other things like it is considered to be even more manly if the person does not stick with one woman in a monogamous relationship, if he is impregnating women all over the place, if he is having multiple sexual relationships with multiple women and so on, not willing to settle for one woman and be married to that woman and to remain faithful to that woman, and even reckless living and heavy drinking.

01:38:00

And I know that the consumption of alcohol is a Christian liberty, unless one goes to the excess of drunkenness, but of course drunkenness is even sometimes hailed as some super -macho activity.

01:38:14

I can even remember the All in the Family program, perhaps you remember that program.

01:38:20

Archie Bunker. Yes, and Meathead is really harassing

01:38:26

Archie, trying to get Archie to admit that he had extramarital affairs in World War II when he was overseas, especially in regard to prostitutes, and Archie finally caved in and admitted to Meathead that, sure he did, but he goes, what do you think?

01:38:43

I wanted everybody to think I was a queer, because that's considered manly.

01:38:49

To be chased is considered to be weak, and ironically, if a

01:38:56

Christian young man is chased in high school and college, and even these days grammar school, if he's chased and refuses to be involved in premarital sexual activity, he might even be considered or labeled as a homosexual, ironically, even though he's a

01:39:12

Christian. So if you could comment about that, and how fathers are to properly instruct their sons in that regard.

01:39:20

I mean, I think it's, again, this is one more expression of how we're living in an age that's very difficult.

01:39:27

Almost every expression that we have in the media or in popular society of masculinity, or I take that back, even just of a man, is negative, and it's negative in either one of, you know, a couple directions.

01:39:43

Like I said, it's either this sort of blowhardy, over -muscled, deepest voice possible, violent, most virile, and sexual conquest all over the place, or it's one of somebody who's homosexual, and it's difficult.

01:40:06

I mean, and this is obviously this idea of what a man is, is obviously expressing itself negatively in society right now with all of the sexual scandal that's going on in politics and in Hollywood.

01:40:20

I mean, these things that these parts of society have hailed for so long are coming back to bite them in a lot of ways, and the dark underbelly of what that perception of masculinity and of power means is coming back, and it's being expressed in black dresses and the golden globes and things like that, and it's,

01:40:42

I mean, I was telling one of my friends today that it's interesting that our society has spent time running away from, as we number it, the sixth commandment, thus

01:40:54

I'll not commit adultery, for so long that it's, you know, it's reaping what it's sowed right now in all these sexual scandals, and it's almost in the policies that all these entities and different companies are trying to create to protect themselves, they're almost running back to it, right?

01:41:15

They're running back to that commandment, and you know, in our expression, our explanation of it in Luther's small catechism, he starts it out by saying that you ought to lead a chaste and decent life, you know, and which

01:41:29

I love. They're such obscure, in my opinion, quote -unquote masculine words, because you really have to sit down and think about what does that mean, to lead a chaste and decent life.

01:41:39

It's not as easy as just that you've never had an affair or that you've only been with one woman.

01:41:46

It actually goes to what you think about yourself and the way you express yourself sexually and what you think about women and who they are as God's creation instead of an object, and it goes deeper even into that, into who we are as people who fail in living up to this commandment, because even if our deeds have been fairly pure, our thoughts and our words certainly haven't throughout our life, and that we're actually defined as children of God adopted into his family on account of what

01:42:17

Christ has done for us, and that's what defines us, and that's who we are, and as we look across the room at other people and decide how we want to treat them and how we are going to treat them, that we see them as this same, you know, forgiven sinner who has redeemed on account of Christ alone as well, and it changes the picture.

01:42:40

Now, you know, that you ought to lead a chaste and decent life means something even different. Masculinity, to me, is more obscure than that.

01:42:51

It's more vague than that. It's not something easily definable, like most gifts, great gifts from God aren't.

01:43:00

You know, it's almost better understood through being experienced than it is by being defined, and that's why it's so important that we be truly masculine men represented through our kindness, through our forgiveness, through our graciousness, through our reflection of what

01:43:23

God has done for us on account of Christ to other people, as Luther said, by being little

01:43:28

Christs to the world. In doing that, people experience us and what truly true masculinity can look like, and even what it looks like when we mess it up, because we are sinners, and we will mess this up constantly more than we succeed at it, and what it means for the people, the children that God has called into our lives to see us ask for forgiveness, which is a truly,

01:43:52

I think, masculine thing, too. Ask for forgiveness for the times that we felt and receive that forgiveness on account of Christ Jesus alone.

01:44:01

That, that's the antidote. I mean, if there is an antidote, and there will be no true, complete antidote until Christ comes again in His glory, but if there is something that we, some way that we can sort of bring some hope to this situation is by, even in the little, flawed ways that we will do it, being that little

01:44:21

Christ to those people that God has called into our lives, by being the men that He has called us to be, and asking and receiving

01:44:27

His forgiveness for the times that we fail, which will be plentiful. Amen. By the way,

01:44:33

I have a little caveat that I want to announce in regard to my belief that consumption of alcohol is a

01:44:41

Christian liberty unless it goes into excess and into drunkenness. I lost that liberty when

01:44:48

I became very scandalously involved in habitual drunkenness and something that I'm very ashamed of, so I don't want my listeners to think that that I have returned to that, any kind of alcohol consumption, but just because I can't do it and shouldn't do it,

01:45:05

I don't believe that I have the biblical authority to rob other brothers and sisters in Christ of that liberty.

01:45:15

But let's go on to another chapter. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Would it be scandalous for me to say that in the name of Christ Jesus you're forgiven for that?

01:45:24

Oh, amen. I know that I'm forgiven for that. In fact, obviously, as a theologically reformed

01:45:30

Christian, I don't even believe that my belief in Christ was summoned up from my own will or heart.

01:45:38

Amen. That was a gift of God, and so my works also are not gaining any brownie points for me to enter into heaven, nor are my sins going to be held against me because of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to me.

01:45:56

Amen. Your God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does. Amen. That's a great way of saying it.

01:46:02

It's perfect. It's Luther. I can't take that credit. Let's move on to the title of one of my favorite

01:46:12

Golden Oldies songs by Percy Sledge, When a Man Loves a Woman. Well, this one, it's funny.

01:46:21

It was probably one of the hardest chapters to write and the most obvious chapters because a man cannot be a father without first, well,

01:46:30

I'd say in my expression, I could not be a father without first being a husband, and so this book deals with the relationship that a husband has with his wife and how that's expressed in their mutual goal to raise their children in the faith.

01:46:48

I mean, one of the reasons I wrote this book, that particular chapter is two, I love my wife and the blessing that she's been to our children is, you know, certainly as much of a gift from God to our children as my presence in their life, but two,

01:47:05

I was raised without the input of my father because he died when I was so young and my mom raised me on her own and I needed at some point in this book to say, hey, listen, this is a book about, ladies, this is a book about being dad and you should read it too because there's definitely benefit in here for you understanding, you know, some of the things that your husband is thinking when you guys are not on the same page, but also to acknowledge that we have to be in this together even if we bring different things to the table and that doesn't mean that we're always going to agree and as controversial as this may be, that doesn't mean that we're always backing each other's play when it comes to the kids, but we're more interested in, you know, that the

01:47:50

God's law is proclaimed and that his gospel is proclaimed and that not our own simple desires when it comes to our kids and we sometimes even have to protect our kids from each other in that situation and that even though I would say that the primary calling of the mouthpiece of grace in the home,

01:48:09

I would never say that the mom doesn't play that role at times too, but I do think that generally and in the chapter

01:48:17

I say this, mom's love is of a different kind, you know, it's not no less love, but it's of a different kind and I compare it to God's providential love, you know,

01:48:26

God's love for us is certainly expressed every day when he makes the sun to rise and shine on us and when he makes the rain to fall and feed the earth, but that love is not the same kind of love, although they are both love, that he shows when he sent his son to die for us or when he forgives us in the name of that son and because of what

01:48:45

Christ has done for us. And so that chapter really just sort of fleshes out some of my thoughts on the differences there between the role that mom plays, the role that dad plays, and how husband and wife approach parenting and what the role of father is and what the role of mother is and, you know, not claiming to be an expert on that, just trying to do my best to read the scriptures and great thinkers from the past and great thinkers who've come into my life and try to put it together in one chapter.

01:49:15

Amen. And Ephesians 5, 25, obviously hits the heart of this.

01:49:22

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.

01:49:29

Actually, one of my favorite texts that points to particular redemption, but that's another time and another subject.

01:49:38

But I don't know if I'm off base saying this, but do you think that that calling is even a harder task than the one, the charge to the women or the wives to submit to their husbands?

01:49:53

It seems that loving your wives just as Christ also loved the church, that's where the rubber meets the road there that separates the men from the boys, just as Christ also loved the church.

01:50:06

Would you say that that is a more difficult charge for men to achieve than it is for women to submit to the men?

01:50:13

I guess I'd say it this way, it's more difficult to figure out when you've done it than it is the other.

01:50:21

Submission is fairly straightforward in a way, but I do think that we mess up on submission there too.

01:50:30

I think submission there really has to do with this idea that the man is called to be the head of his household and the head of his family, but that doesn't mean that the man's always right.

01:50:41

That doesn't mean that whether he's right or wrong, his word always wins.

01:50:47

What that means is that he has a very particular calling in the household. G .K.

01:50:53

Chesterton put it this way, the man's the head because the mouth is in the head and the mouth is responsible for proclaiming forgiveness.

01:51:01

So in that way, I think the man's the head. Yes, I think it's a very difficult thing for Paul to look at husbands and say, love your wives as Christ loved the church.

01:51:11

That's an automatic fail. Like, okay, this I have not done. What now?

01:51:17

So you go then to Romans 7 where Paul, as he has figured out, this I have not done throughout that chapter and gets near the end of that section and says, who can save me from this body of death?

01:51:30

And the answer is the same for the men in their lack of love and in the women, their lack of submission.

01:51:35

Thanks be to God and Jesus Christ our Lord. It comes back to, again, Christ being the center of the wheel, and I think that's what is going on there in Ephesians 5.

01:51:47

And yes, it's a very difficult task and a quite impossible task when we are told to love our wives as Christ loved the church.

01:51:55

Yeah. Amen. Well, even though I'm not a modern -day ecumenist, if anybody who

01:52:02

I'm going to quote from the Roman Catholic Church exists, it's G .K. Chesterton. Oh yeah, no kidding.

01:52:09

I'm with you there. And we have an anonymous listener who says,

01:52:15

I have asked this question of other guests before in different ways, but I am going through a very difficult situation in my life with an ex -husband who hates

01:52:28

Christ and his church and does whatever he can do to dissuade our adult children from following my example of Christianity.

01:52:40

I was wondering what your guest's opinion is of the command to honor thy father and mother, obviously in this case on the emphasis on the father.

01:52:51

Does not a wicked father and husband relinquish some of those privileges that he once had in regard to the way his children view and treat him?

01:53:04

I'm not saying that his children should hate him, but are they to always sing praises toward him and put him on a pedestal and not correct him when he is sinning?

01:53:16

Because it seems that many Christians just like to throw around flowery platitudes about forgive and forget and remember we are to honor our fathers and mothers, and it seems as if the children are to treat their fathers just as if he was a

01:53:34

God -honoring Christian man. Please give me your counsel. So in our numbering, that's the fourth commandment, honor your father and mother that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth.

01:53:47

As Luther explains this in his larger catechism, one of the things that he points out is that the command is clear that children are to honor their parents, but the inference from the text is clear too and explicit in other places in the text that parents are not to exasperate their children while still claiming their honor.

01:54:15

And I think what you have here, it seems if everything's being represented accurately, is a situation where the father is definitely exasperating the entire situation.

01:54:26

I'm going to say two things and then I'll close up on this. There are two words we would say that come from God.

01:54:32

God's law and his gospel. God's law is that thing that condemns us of our sin, that points out our sin, that shows us that we do not measure up or hit the mark.

01:54:42

His gospel is that word of Christ about Christ for us that frees us from all these requirements.

01:54:50

Both words are necessary in proclamation in the church, both words are necessary in proclamation in the family.

01:54:56

If again what you've said has been represented accurately, your ex -husband is at the point where he needs the proclamation of the law from his family to him.

01:55:06

And once God has done his work through the proclamation of the law, then when that law has done its work and contrition and repentance have set in, then the gospel comes, right?

01:55:21

And so we preach God's law. Poor, miserable sinners that we are have our only hope is in Christ, and then we preach his gospel, trusting that God will work through both of those.

01:55:31

No man is a hero that denies the gospel or drives people away from it, even if he is somebody's father.

01:55:39

That is no hero. In fact, in the old language we would say we hold them in anathema, in condemnation.

01:55:46

And they need to hear the voice of God's law condemning them. Then they need to hear the voice of God's gospel adopting them back as sons.

01:55:54

But until that point, as they stand as an enemy of the gospel, God's law is upon them.

01:56:02

And honor them civilly, right, in everyday life, but do not have to honor their actions, and in fact ought not honor their actions in attempts to drive his own children away from the life -giving font of Christ Jesus our

01:56:16

Lord. Amen. And Anonymous, if you give me, obviously privately, your full name, mailing address, etc.,

01:56:26

you will receive the last copy of Being Dad, Father as a

01:56:32

Picture of God's Grace by Dr. Scott Keith. That will be delivered to you by CVBBS .com,

01:56:39

or should I say shipped out to you by them. It'll be delivered by your postal service. But thank you so much for contributing such a personal and intimate situation to our discussion today.

01:56:51

You have about two minutes to summarize, Dr. Scott, what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today in regard to this subject.

01:56:59

I guess I'd say that what I would like to leave people with is this idea that if we have any hope in this life and in this world and in our salvation, it stands in Christ Jesus alone.

01:57:11

And that hope is shown upon us and showered upon us in the message of proclamation that we have in the gospel of Christ Jesus.

01:57:19

That he died for us according to the scriptures, that he rose on the third day according to those same scriptures, that his resurrection was attested to and witnessed by the apostles in more than 501 time, and eventually by the apostle

01:57:32

Paul in the revelation of Christ to him personally. And that that message of the gospel, when we proclaim it to those people that God has called us to be in their lives, that that message of the gospel comes from our mouth and the

01:57:47

Holy Spirit works through into the ears and into the heart of sinners to not only create faith, but engender that faith, to strengthen that faith, and to keep them in that faith until the day when they die and they go to meet him in paradise.

01:58:00

And then we as men and as fathers, we are called by God into the lives of the people that he has given us.

01:58:08

Usually we call them our family, sometimes their extended family, sometimes their friends, to be mouthpieces of that grace, that message of hope, that gospel to these people whom we love.

01:58:22

And that God does not need us to do that for his own sake, but he calls us to do it for the sake of those loved ones that we have, that we call other sinners, that we call other

01:58:32

Christians, that we call neighbors, that we call family. And then my hope and my prayer was that through being dad, father, as a picture of God's grace,

01:58:39

I was able to write that clearly and to provide that message of hope in even a small degree to the people who read the book.

01:58:50

Amen. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Scott Keith, for being our guest today. I look forward to you returning to Iron Trip and Zion often in the future as a guest, and I want to remind our listeners that the websites where you can find out more about Dr.

01:59:05

Scott Keith and his ministry are 1517legacy .com, 1517legacy .com.

01:59:13

You can also go to thinkingfellows .com. That's thinkingfellows .com.

01:59:19

You could go to thejaggedword .com. That's thejaggedword .com. And you could also go to christholdfast .org,

01:59:30

I thank you so much for being on the program. I want to thank all of you who took the time to write in questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater

01:59:43

Savior than you are a sinner. Amen. We look forward to hearing from you and our questions and your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.