The Laborers' Podcast- Biblical Theology in a Healthy Church

Hello and welcome to the Laborer's Podcast. We're so thankful that you chose to join us and spend time with us.

We want to reach our community with the word of God for Jesus Christ, for the glory of God.

We want people to know Jesus, to love him. And we wanna help each other to learn

God's word and understand it better so that we can know God and love him more. And we want to grow in that as God grows his kingdom throughout the world.

And we're humbled and blessed to be a part of that. I'm thankful to have my brothers with me again tonight.

They are so faithful to be with me each week as they're able, Claude and Dan, I'm so thankful for them.

I'm thankful for the other guys that don't always make it on the podcast, but they're in our little group that pray for us and that we pray for each other and we run things by one another.

And I'm thankful for all those guys as well. Tonight, we're gonna talk about or continue our series on things to look for in a healthy church.

That's, I believe that's one of the things that is gonna make a powerful difference as we transition into becoming a more godly nation.

As we see nations come to the Lord, they're gonna come to the

Lord through healthy churches. Now, we're still in a place where churches are all over the place.

Theologically, we believe different things. It's all over the board, it's everywhere.

But I think, I believe, and these guys may agree or they may disagree, but I believe as that mustard seed grows, as the leaven fills the whole lump,

I believe that we're gonna grow in our theology, we're gonna grow in our commonality with one another, we're gonna grow in unity, and the gospel's gonna spread, the law of God is gonna spread, and we're all just going to stream to Zion and worship

Jesus. And I think it's gonna be a beautiful thing. And that scatteredness in our theology is gonna decline.

And I think with technology that we have today, we see so many people, or I see a lot of people, stepping out in boldness with the abortion issue.

And there were probably many in our past that stepped out in boldness.

You had pastors being bold behind the pulpit, and we just never seen them. But now with technology and social media,

I'm seeing more and more people with better and better theology, and more and more people stepping out in boldness.

That you have an abolitionist movement now, not to free slaves, but to free babies from the danger of death and the danger of slaughter.

And people are stepping out boldly to our legislators, to their communities, and at the abortion meals, the murder meals, people are stepping out boldly.

And I think that's gonna increase. And so we have an exciting future ahead of us, and we just wanna be a part of that.

And I think healthy churches are going to be one of the catalyst in moving us in that direction.

But before we get on our topic tonight, sorry to hog all the introduction, guys.

Before we get on our topic tonight with biblical theology, which is a huge mark of a healthy church,

I asked these guys if we could tackle a little subject, which is really related to biblical theology.

But guys, here's the start of the program, the preface to our topic, biblical theology.

When we talk about moral issues, I'll hear people say, like, we're gonna watch a video here in just a second.

No, I don't think he says it in this video. I think he said it in another video where he was preaching in Washington. But he said, if you're not, it's because pastors are failing to preach the gospel or they've not preached the gospel is the reason we're in this certain situation we're in today.

And I've kind of leaned towards sympathizing with that sentiment. And so how can we relate moral issues with the gospel?

How are gospel or how are moral issues, how did I phrase the question?

What are the gospel implications on moral issues? Well, moral issues are related to God's standard of right and wrong, which are boiled down in the most simplistic of terms.

Is my volume okay? I just did the... Yeah. Okay. In the most simplistic of terms, to the commandments.

I mean, in particularly, like you mentioned abortion, I mean,

I guess we're allowed to say that. They may tag it for us to saying it, but abortion is murder.

I mean, what is the commandment? Thou shall not kill. You shall not kill, right?

You shall not bear false witness. There's another moral commandment. You know, the first four commandments, of course, is our relation to God.

The last six, our relation to man, to our neighbor, right? False bearing and false witness to folks that concerning, particularly concerning God's law, which encompasses the whole of it, to change it, to dilute it, to water it down, to make it less than it is, is a false witness.

Any thoughts on that, Dan? What are the gospel implications on moral issues? Well, moral issues have to do with what is right and wrong.

Right and wrong, you hit right at the dead center point of what the gospel is dealing with.

You know, we have sinned because we've broken God's law. We are morally corrupt in some way, form, or fashion, usually all the way to the bone.

But so the gospel implications are that every single moral issue that comes up in our society is an issue that we could fix through practical means or this, that, or the other thing, you know, legislating stuff.

But I mean, it doesn't really fix the issue from coming up. The only way that we can fix moral issues is through the gospel, because the gospel is the only way that you get at the true heart of the matter.

Why do people sin? We sin because we're corrupt in our natures. We're corrupt in our natures because we're sinners.

The sin that we were born with manifests itself as, you know, real sin, us doing evil.

And that evil comes into the world in the form of moral failures. So we've got either the option of calling the things that we want to good, which is not because the moral standard is not us or what we want or what we think society would do better with.

Our moral standard is actually what God is. So what gospel has to do with that is that since it's a sin issue, since morality is just sin or not sin, to know that the guilt of sin must be dealt with, then we have to be forgiven by Christ, because he is the only one who has come and made a way of salvation where we can not have our sins counted to us, but taken from us, you know, put away from us as far as the

East is from the West, you know, over the horizon past the stormy sea or whatever you wanna call it, put away because Christ has taken it and put it to death.

So the moral implication or the implications of the gospel for moral issues is everything. It's like,

I don't know why we wouldn't be involved with it like anything, like get political because politics is just about how we should live as a society.

And if how we should live as a society is involves us interacting with one another and with the world around us, then we have a book that talks about that.

How do we interact with the creation around us? Well, we look to the creator. How do we interact with the people around us?

We look to the one who's created them as well, and then we have to act accordingly. So it's, yeah, we should be involved, oh,

I dropped my pen. We should be involved in everything. I heard somebody the other day said that the way you fix our political system is, he said, number one, term limits.

I was like, okay, that sounds good. Making it to where nobody can be in office for, I think he said more than like 10 or 15 years, like if you're moving up through the ranks or whatever.

I was like, okay, you know, I can get on board with that. And he said, anyone who's ever been a pastor should not be allowed in office.

I was like, whoa, hold on, wait a second now. I was like, and here's why.

Because of what we talked about on previous podcasts, you know, the myth of neutrality.

If you take away someone's religious beliefs and tell them to enter into the public sphere only based on some amorphous blob of morals that they've concocted for themselves, then you automatically assume a different worldview than the

Christian worldview. So to say we're gonna meet on a neutral playing field was actually to say, no, we're going to be atheistic or we're going to be

Hinduistic or Islamic. We're going to be something other than whatever you are.

And generally the people that say that are atheistic, they're secular, and they just want to get any sort of religion, any sort of reminder that there's a spiritual higher power out there who's created them and that they're responsible to.

They just want that out of, like they want to be God. They want to determine right from wrong and how they should live.

Yeah, we should be involved in everything. But no, I don't have any thoughts on it. Maybe we should rename the podcast again,

Robert. You should rename it from the Laborist Podcast to where, because there's probably gonna be some very strong stuff said tonight.

We should just call it, put that in your pipe and smoke it. That was a good word,

Dan, that was a good word. With a little bit of organ music. I'll have to bring that up, hang on.

Well, while you're looking for that, well, that leads us into the next thought on this issue, because like you guys said, the gospel speaks to our soul.

Our soul needs rescuing. The gospel speaks to our soul. And then the implications, the gospel speaks to how we then live, which would be morals.

Morals. And then the gospel speaks to how we interact with culture. Gospel speaks to how we interact with politics.

It speaks to legislation. It speaks to serving in the government. The gospel, the implications of the gospel speak to all those things.

So to me, here's the question that I've had for so long is practically as a pastor leading and shepherding a people, we don't want to present this gospel in a way that's moralistic, legalistic, or make these moral issues, salvific issues.

If you don't do this, you're not a Christian. So how do we present these things as gospel issues without being moralistic, legalistic, and making them salvific issues?

Now, we agree that they're gospel issues. That because they're implications of the gospel.

But I think that there's a temptation to tie them so closely to the gospel that we make them necessary for salvation.

Or, and some people feel that way, or we're made to feel like, if I don't do this, then

I'm not right with God. And it's a close thing because we do want to submit him and obey him in these areas.

That's part of our gratitude from the gospel. But they're not requirements for salvation.

So how would you balance that as a shepherd leading your flock? And either one of you can take that.

You go first if you want to, Dan. I'm trying to think of this because there are certain things where if you do them, you should be careful for your soul.

If you engage in certain activities, yeah, you like, I don't know, like maybe you need to repent.

But I think what you're getting at is, what if I'm not as involved as this other guy at the abortion mill?

Or what if I'm not as involved as somebody else at feeding the homeless?

Or what if I'm not as involved as somebody else? Do I have to be involved in every single one of those things when we look at it from a gospel?

And the answer is yes and no. We should be involved in all of them, but we have to do it within our means and our giftings and under the direction of the elders of our church.

We're not rogues. We don't go off and do whatever we want to on our own. So what you want to focus on is what you want to focus on is what you can do, and then doing it to the glory of God in the community of your church.

And what that does is, if you have some people who have strengths and you have weaknesses, you work together in order to labor for a positive change, whether it be for the ending of abortion.

We have a weird situation here in upstate New York. One of the most liberal abortion laws, and they're trying to go even more liberal with them.

I've heard even perhaps after birth, allowing them to terminate a life.

It is just ridiculous, but we don't actually have an abortion clinic with,

I mean, I think the closest one is a little over an hour away from us. So for us to practically be there on a regular occurring, like regular, like several times throughout the week basis isn't necessarily practical, depending on what hours are open and whatever, but we can still do certain things.

We can pray, we can find churches that are closer, that are like -minded, that are engaging in the work, and we can give to them, or if we do have time on the weekend and they're doing something, or we can get over there during a weeknight, maybe go out and help.

We definitely wanna do those things as we're able, but God has put us all in our own context and with our own skill sets.

So that way we can do those things to his glory. And really the main push behind it all is, are we active?

After, are we trusting and believing in the gospel? So we keep the gospel in the forefront.

The center of all that we do. We're not ending abortion to end abortion, to take away somebody's ability to choose whether or not they want to have a baby or not have a baby.

We're not looking to end an evil. What we're doing is we're looking to change the world to make it match

God's law. And the only way that's done is through the gospel of Jesus Christ. So we preach the gospel, that is our center.

We can't engage in any of those works, feeding the homeless or the abortion ministry or whatever else you may have the opportunity to engage in.

You don't do that apart from the gospel. The gospel is the motivating and driving factor.

And that looks weird sometimes because you don't necessarily know how to mesh those two things together because the gospel will not put cornbread in somebody's stomach.

But at the same time, cornbread in the stomach with an empty soul is pointless.

Amen. I don't know if that was your real question or not, but that's the one I took it to be in answer.

That's fantastic. I totally agree with everything you said. And here's some thoughts that I was having and you guys can tell me what you think about my thoughts on the thing.

So I take these moral issues as I would take the fruits of the spirit.

You have the command from Christ, it says, love your neighbors yourself, which would be a result of the gospel.

It's not the gospel, but it's a result of the gospel. Just like the fruits of the spirit are the result of the gospel, it's a fruit of the gospel.

So we bear that fruit. So we share justification by faith. We share the gospel, we evangelize.

And then, just like scripture says, we examine ourselves to see if we're in the faith.

We test the spirits. We look at our lives and examine ourselves. And one of the ways we do that is the fruits of the spirit.

And this command of Christ, love your neighbors yourself. Well, that's painting with a broad brush.

There's many ways that Christ would have us to do that. And one of those things is like Dan was talking about, loving the pre -born.

That's loving your neighbors yourself. That's just one example. And so how

I would counsel or preach that would be, what is the trajectory?

What is the direction? What are the desires of your heart? They're not always gonna be equally the same as mine, but what are your desires?

What's the trajectory of your life and your heart? Is it to love your neighbors yourself? How are you doing that?

And it's not gonna be perfection, but it's gonna be, I've heard this from Todd Creel, it's not gonna be about perfection, it's about direction.

So what does your life look like? And on this podcast, we've talked about this before. You look at your life as a video recording.

You look at it as a whole and not just snapshot because we can take snapshots and you could take one still shot of me in my life and say, well, he's definitely not a

Christian. But if you look at your life as a whole, what does it look like? And then the other thing which

I've seen is really common on social media is, I heard somebody refer to it recently as ministry shaming.

If you're not doing this, then you're not that, or you're not up to this level.

You're not doing things right. And I think that's a good word for ministry shaming.

And so we need to have grace toward one another because their gifting may not be your gifting.

They might not be in the same level of sanctification that you are. So I believe we need to share grace with one another, but I also believe we need to speak truth that we do need to examine and look at the trajectory, look at the direction, look at our desires and see if the fruit is there and fruit is growing.

Does that make sense? It absolutely does. Well, did you want to add anything before we get to the exciting video?

No, my commentary on that will probably be bold enough. So I'll just wait.

I added the little tag, edited the comment to the show before we got started.

We're gonna respond to the latest viral video from a pastor, Greg Locke. And I hope that I don't break any kind of policies by showing too long of the video.

I've not looked up any of the fair use things. So we'll do the best we can.

If we get knocked off, it'll be okay. Yeah, it's for teaching purposes. It's for teaching purposes, that's right.

Right, it's for teaching purposes. We're not benefiting financially from this. That's absolutely correct.

So we want to respond to pastor Greg Locke's latest viral video. And I think it has a little bit to do with what we've been talking about tonight.

So guys, hold on to your seats. I'm gonna place right now, if you vote

Democrat, I don't even want you around this church, you get out. You get out, you demon. You get out, you baby butchering.

Election thief. You cannot be a Christian and vote Democrat in this nation. I don't care how mad that makes you.

You get pissed off as you want to. You cannot be a Christian and vote Democrat in this nation.

They are God denying demons that butcher babies and hate this nation. They hate this nation.

Get mad all you want to. I don't care if you stand, I don't care if you throw tomatoes, praise God. I'm about to throw a microphone up in his house.

CNN can eat my dirty socks. You cannot be a Democrat and a Christian. You cannot. Somebody say amen.

The rest of you, get out. Get out. Get out in the name of Jesus.

I ain't playing your stupid games. Bunch of devils. I'm sick of it.

Everyone talking about the insurrection. Let me tell you something.

You ain't seen the insurrection yet. You keep on pushing our buttons.

You low down sorry compromisers. You God hating communist America. You'll find out what an insurrection is because we ain't playing your garbage.

We ain't playing your mess. My Bible says that the church of the living God is an institution that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And the Bible says that we'll take it by force. That's what the Bible says.

That's what the Bible says. All right, that's what the

Bible says. Why would you even put a watch again button on that video? He didn't give us a book chapter and verse, but he said, that's what the

Bible says. All right, who wants to go first? What's your first response? All right, I've only got to make my commentary to my wife and we all know how that is.

Being preachers, when you start talking theological stuff to your wife, sometimes they just zone out, right?

Because that's who we practice on a lot of times. But let me make my first comment.

My first comment would be this. What he says at the very beginning is likely something that most people haven't already thought.

Let that ruminate for a minute. And you say, and you might be thinking, you might've thought that, but I never have.

Well, maybe you're better than me. So second, I would say this. The pulpit is no place for what he just did.

The people that are staring at that pulpit and should be getting the word of God proclaimed to them are not getting the word of God proclaimed to them.

They're not getting biblical theology taught to them. They are getting a political agenda taught to them.

And what Dan said earlier about the importance of every ministry of the church being gospel -centered, that's completely void in this, in his rant.

He is, he came up through the

IFB ranks, so that's the Independent Fundamental King James Only Premillennial Baptist, right?

That's where he came up and he kind of, I think he kind of tried to go reformed, if I'm correct in my understanding.

And then he went off into Charismania, which is where he is now, right?

Because the focus is just on quote unquote physical healing and demons.

It's Charismania is what it is. So he is like this hybrid IFB charismatic juggernaut now, which people are attracted to that.

They're drawn to that. And that is not how

Christians, or to biblically do ministry or make a difference.

Certainly, like Dan said, Christians should be involved in politics.

Christians should reach out into that area. But we do not do that as he touted through insurrection, right, through, and I use this term carefully, civil disobedience, right?

We're not called to that verse that he quoted there that has nothing to do with the church taking over the world.

When he said, Jesus said, the violent take it by force, it has nothing to do with that, nothing.

And so what he is inciting is a completely political agenda and a power mongering ideology, which has nothing to do with the gospel and the crickets chirp.

Do you have anything you wanted to share? That's not crickets, that's a bird clock. Yeah, see,

I had never, I thought people were just out to lunch when they were talking about Christian nationalists and being a danger, because I think they'd lump a lot of good type folks in with that critique or really slander.

But that guy, okay, all right, I'm on board with you. He's missed the point.

Yeah, I don't know what that was. That was not Bible preaching, it was a political rant.

It wasn't from a place of love. It wasn't from a place of caring.

It wasn't, because in one sense, and he's almost right, but then he just takes a hard right turn, like off into nowhere, because he's absolutely right that you cannot be a, and I'm gonna qualify the statement in a second, you cannot be a

Bible -believing Christian and vote Democrat. Now, let me qualify that a little bit, because I mean that if you understand the platform, you know exactly what you're doing, and then you do it on purpose.

Some people just don't know. They think, oh, I'm helping folks by doing social programs, and they just don't understand everything that goes into the political ideology or where it comes from or where it's going.

Amen, dude. There's definitely a place for, I would say church discipline of the far back at the beginning stages where you say, hold up, we need to rethink some things.

Let's understand exactly where some stuff's coming from, lay it out and say, now, is that really what you're trying to do?

And I'd say nine times out of 10, real Christian people will be like, nope,

I am not trying to do that. They may have to wrestle with some stuff, may have to try to get through, how do we help single mothers or how do we do this?

And they may have to battle through it and struggle and understand and figure it out for themselves. So we should be gracious, but yeah, he's almost right, but he takes a terrible, terrible turn.

But at this point, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. We got to look at the other parties as well.

And when we look at them, they're kind of sorely lacking as well. You look at the different things that the

Republican Party has put out in favor of abortion. And I say that,

I mean what I said when I said, in favor of abortion, of their heartbeat bill that they've passed in several places that people say, oh, this is great and wonderful.

It's stopping abortion up to this point. It's like, no, it's legalizing abortion up until this point.

Like the baseline is God's law. It's his command that we do not kill each other and we don't kill, especially those who are harmless or not harmless.

Helpless. Helpless in the womb. We don't kill those people. And so for us to say, look at this wonderful law.

It stops abortion at 20 weeks or six weeks or whatever. Hard stop there.

These are codifying law of abortion is legal and what we say is good in the land.

There's no need to punish someone if they kill a child that's this small. But if they grow up a little bit, then we'll punish them.

It's just as wicked as saying, hey, if they're full grown or even out of the womb a little bit, we'll kill them there.

So I think a lot of Republicans would hate to hear somebody say, if you vote

Republican, you shouldn't be doing so as a Christian. Granted, let's use the same qualifications.

A lot of people don't understand what they're voting for. They think, hey, we're doing well, we're doing good. But we need to examine ourselves.

We are not a people who are supposed to be tied down by political parties and political ideologies.

We are the kingdom of God and that is where our allegiance lies. And because we're the kingdom of God and because that's where our allegiance lies, we need to be able to just grow a pair and start voting in ways that we're gonna stand out on our own for a while.

And people may look at it and say, why are you doing this? You're not getting any traction. But that's not even the point.

The point is that Christ is honored and glorified through our lives. He is the one who's going to make the changes in the hearts necessary to watch the change in the polls and the voting booths go into a different direction.

Probably some sort of party has got a different letter like M or V or something because we haven't come up with a name for it yet.

But yeah, we need to be thinking about these things through a gospel lens and seeing

Christ change the nations through the changing the hearts of individuals.

And what he was getting at in that video where he went off the rails is that he said that we should change the way that we're doing things in America by being loud and boisterous

MAGA supporters. Because that's what I heard was what Democrats bad,

Republicans good, where's your red hat? If you don't have it, we're going to kick you out and you're a demon. Yeah.

Like I said, he was one of those, he was one of the charismatics that was prophesying, without a doubt,

Trump's going to be in office. He was making videos, right? He just disqualified himself and again, that's not prophecy anyways, but anyway, yeah.

But do we get stones or is that just Old Testament stuff? Can we bring the stones in?

For him? Yeah. It might not hurt.

I mean, like where are we at in this theonomy to talk? Right, right. No, we're general equity.

So there's got to be some reason and yeah. Sure, so bring the stones, all right.

We'll rip river rocks at him, small round river rocks that we would use for skipping.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me combine the two things that Claude and Dan said and put them together real quick and see if it makes sense.

So I really appreciate what Claude said and just being transparent and being honest.

Many of us have thought similar things along similar lines as that.

People who are with a certain party, we know what that party stands for.

I mean, that's been made evident or that's been part of the agenda is for us to know what they stand for and what they push.

And they're clear on that. They don't have any more of what their agenda is. They're for so many of these immoral things.

But then we've got to take what Dan said as well and say, okay, well,

I'm with the other party and guess what the other party does. And I appreciate what you said,

Dan. I want to hang on to it because it's very important. If I'm with the other party, the other party legalizes abortion up to a certain point.

So we can cast stones at that one party, but if we're affiliated with the other party that legalizes abortion up to a certain point, we've legalized murder.

So we can't cast any stones at that other party because we're just as guilty if we're part of that party and support that kind of legislation.

Not me, that's just flat out all there is to it. It takes that analogy in scripture to a whole different level.

Instead of taking the plank out of your own eye to help the speck, it's take the plank out of your eye before you help take the tree out of theirs.

I mean, you're both grossly in error. So we need to worry about getting ourselves right or starting something new.

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have a Christian party and just do it right.

Just be unashamedly Christian because the other parties are unashamedly not

Christian. They're unashamedly atheistic, God -hating people who come out in their ideology and say so.

I would say, Dan, that there is another party, and that is the church.

We're not called to function primarily in the political arena.

We are that contrast for both the Republican and the Democrats. We are that other party.

That is, we are the light of Christ in the world. And so in doing that, the challenge with actual politics is there's always a compromise.

It doesn't matter if you're Democrat, doesn't matter if you're Republican. Sadly, there is always a compromising position that has to be taken to get along.

You get along to go along, so to speak, in politics. But the church, we're not called to compromise.

We don't have to cower or cater or bow to a political party.

We are the children of the living God who had been called out of darkness into his marvelous and his glorious light and are the kingdom of God.

And thereby, we are that distinguishing group.

We are that distinguishing party, so to speak, in a non -political sense.

And like, Rob, going back to your original question when we started here, that's the key.

That's where the pulpit, that's how we preach is to, number one, to make it unequivocally clear without any shadow of any doubt that there is not salvation in a political party.

There is no lasting hope in a political movement or any movement of any kind, so to speak.

There is only salvation in Jesus Christ and him alone.

That really goes to the crux. Tyler, I know he's sick tonight, but man, two to three weeks ago, when

Cultures Clash, I believe, was the name of the title of his podcast, it was part two, but he brought out a very good point about, we hear it a lot in our circles nowadays, a pinch of incense for Caesar.

Right? And that was an inherently political statement. And so when

Paul says in Romans, no, or I'm sorry, when the scriptures teach no king but Christ, right?

When we say Jesus is Lord, we are making a political statement. We're saying the

Democrats aren't Lord, the Republicans aren't Lord, the Independents aren't Lord, Jesus Christ and him alone are

Lord. I think I just had a whisker fall out on the keyboard. Jesus Christ is

Lord alone. And that's where it's got to start. And then it's got to be made again, just as clear as Dan beautifully spoke that earlier, that the gospel is not just, and I've said this for years, the gospel is not just everything.

It's the only thing. It's the only thing. And that is the function of the church in society, in the world, that we proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and we trust

God with the results, because there's no amount of legislating righteousness or sin, right?

There's justification on both sides as it's been made completely clear. I'm sure everybody who knows us is full and well aware of our positions, particularly on abortion.

The Democratic Party is outrightly and overtly for it. The Republican Party is, they're like closet

Democrats to a big degree, because like with the Louisiana bill of abortion that was set forth, just as it was about to go big for discussion, the pro -life groups, which are majority

Republican, they sent out messages to everybody and they said, squash this bill.

The pro -life groups said to squash the bill of abolition of abortion.

So there is no hope in a political system or a political organization.

It's only in Christ Jesus. And the moral, to answer your question from my side, there is no way that we can preach sides, quote unquote sides on issues without there being moral and spiritual ramifications.

Absolutely no way. Nor should we fear folks, having folks think that we are being legalistic or moralistic, right?

Because up front, the church's role, the pastor's role, the elder's responsibility is to ensure that sound doctrine is being proclaimed.

And when sound doctrine is proclaimed from the pulpit regularly, whether most times folks sleep through the service or not, they're getting it.

They are getting it because that's why folks are so far left now. Even folks who call themselves

Christian to a large degree, because they've not had sound doctrine taught to them.

And that's a really good segue into our topic tonight, but I wanted to make one more comment. It's so important that,

I really appreciate what you said, Claude, that we're not tied as Christians to one party because the church is our party and we need party leaders to be speaking out correctly, speaking out correctly, because I wanted to say this too, in response to the video, we have guys like this and we have so many other guys on TV and social media where this is why they're so dangerous is because they have some truth that we can agree with, but so much, which we've already talked about it, it is so wrong and will lead us down the wrong path.

That's why they're so dangerous is because there's that little bit of truth in there that we're like, oh, okay, yeah, I kind of agree with that.

It sounds biblical, it sounds good. And we just gravitate toward that. And then their charismatic presentation is so attractive and it draws us in.

So the combination of that is just so dangerous. And then onto what

I was saying just a second ago, we need party leaders, church leaders, to be speaking out boldly against this and to our congregants, the

Republican side or the Republican party has been painted with the picture that says for so long, they are the party with the

Christian values. And that is not necessarily the case. True. And we need party leaders, church leaders to speak boldly to our people and say, we need to take off our rose colored glasses and not be so married, so tied to one party that we compromise on legislation, compromise on candidates.

We need to stand firm on the truth of God's word, no matter the consequences, no matter if they are the lesser of the two evils.

We need to stand on God's word and the truth, truth of God's word and stand on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so that's gonna be my two cents on that. So I appreciate you guys responding to that video.

And again, the truths that you guys have talked about tonight, it's one of those times where I wish, our viewership wasn't so low because, but like you said,

Claude, and I'm totally on board and totally believe in what you said, that we speak the truth and we leave the results up to God.

These truths, it's not because they're coming from us. We want the whole world to hear the truth of Jesus and the truth of his word.

And so that's where that heart that I have comes from. I don't want people to hear from us.

I want people to hear Jesus and hear the truth. And so when I say I wish so many more people could hear what you guys say, that's the heart where it's coming from.

So you're right in what you said, that's why we need to have good biblical theology in our churches.

And so we're coming up on probably about 15 more minutes. And so we're gonna have a part two of biblical theology, if that's okay.

Is that okay with you guys? Okay, cool. All right, biblical theology. I put down that there are two main goals of biblical theology, knowing

God rightly and knowing how to rightly live. Can one of you guys kind of explain what we mean by that?

The two main goals, knowing God rightly and knowing how to rightly live. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

Yeah. Those are two big words, but it just means right knowledge, right living.

Orthodox, knowing that orthodoxy is knowing God rightly and orthopraxy is living rightly according to the scriptures.

One flows from the other. Yeah. And we can see just based on what our previous conversation, it gets all out of whack when the other is absent or the other is off course.

You're gonna have wrong practice. Yep. Any thoughts on our main or the main goals of biblical theology,

Dan? Well, real quick, I think it might be helpful to define biblical theology.

Well, that's a nice question, yeah. Oh, is it? Well, good. I don't know how much I read the question.

Anyway. Anyway. I was kind of curious myself because there's a biblical theology where biblical is just a descriptive word to talk about your theology.

And then there's an actual category of theology called biblical theology.

And if I remember correctly, Gerhardus Voss who said, and I'm paraphrasing greatly, this is basically just an idea from his book, that biblical theology is basically a study of how

God has revealed himself to mankind through the scriptures. So -

Throughout history. Throughout history. So he goes through basically the whole

Bible showing how God has revealed himself through natural revelation, the prophets, through scripture, through the apostles, through all of it.

And throughout the history of how God did it. So, you know, you take that verse in Hebrews, it says in various times, in sundry manners or diverse manners,

God spoke through the prophets. He spoke to us in a bunch of different ways in the past, but today he has spoken to us through his son.

Basically you take that verse and look at the whole of history through the lens of that verse.

And that is what biblical theology, the category, the, I don't know, science, the proper biblical theology.

The academic study, yeah. Yeah, there we go, the academic study. So which one are you talking about,

Rob? We'll get in on it. Either one, I don't care, we'll do it. It's all good. Well, I think it's really good that you brought that up because this is for our community.

And so I think that's the reason that we're having these conversations is because I think that they're not happening everywhere.

And so I think it's good that you brought it up. So, go ahead. I'm just saying like, let me explain why

I think these things you got on your list here is fantastic. Because what biblical theology does is it does things a little bit differently than systematic theology.

And it does it differently than historical theology. And all three of those can be separated and abused.

Yes. So it's almost like you want to run from one to the other, to the other, and then you keep going.

And it shouldn't be just to run around in a circle, but you should be getting tighter and tighter and tighter as you go. Spiral.

You want to start with, I think a great place to start, which most people haven't, a great place to start would be biblical theology.

We're looking at what has God done and how has he revealed himself to us throughout time. And then once you have the big picture, you can go back and do a systematic theology where you go through each of the doctrine.

You know, who is God? Who is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? What is salvation? What is my sin?

Who is mankind? What are we doing in the end times? You can go back and you can zero down on each one of those.

And then it's really important to also go back through historical theology so you can see how the

Holy Spirit has guided his people through the scriptures throughout history. You can see, hey, there was a group of people who believed that Jesus didn't come in the flesh.

They were heretics. So since I've adopted that position, I probably should repent and go on to better theology.

Yeah. And once you get done with historical theology, which you're never really done, but once you go there, then you jump back around to biblical theology because once you have drilled down on doctrine and the historical understanding of it throughout church history, you go back and look at the big picture again, you're gonna see a hundred thousand things that you missed the first time through.

True. And that's gonna help zero in on your systematic theology and your historical theology.

The danger with not getting the big picture is you're susceptible, especially if you zero down on systematic theology really hard.

It makes it really easy for you to go in and think of theology like a buffet, which

I did when I first got to Bible college. We went through a systematic theology and we went through like five different positions on original sin.

And then we picked one. And then we moved on to three different positions on theology proper.

And the two of them were heretical, but we picked a good one and moved on. Then we went on to soteriology and we were able to pick this.

And so when you got done, you had this theology and this one and this one and this position and that one.

And then you never saw how they all connected together. And you could hold wildly contradictory positions within your own theology and not even know it.

And you see, it also leaves you susceptible to saying, if I can drill down here, that means that I can take this verse and then this verse and this verse and put them together and make up rapture after a seven year tribulation period.

Something like that. Oh, I had to. We need a sound effect for jabs.

Yeah, some Mike Tyson or something. Oh yeah, yeah.

Get out. So I guess the goals of biblical theology then would be exactly what

Claude said, knowing God and living in right relationship with him, doing things, knowing

God, orthodoxy and orthopraxy. But I think it's helpful to have categories to understand those things in as well, which is why you have a whole list of stuff we haven't gotten to yet, but we're getting there.

If not today, next time. Next time. Well, I really appreciate everything that you just said, because that's the whole purpose of doing this is explaining all those things that we can understand.

And so let me answer your first question, which one am I talking about? And I'm gonna say both.

The way I could have phrased it was theology that's biblical and then underneath that is all those things that you talked about.

That's fair. Yeah, that's where I'm coming from. So any tweets based on knowing that now?

No, man, we're all good. We shouldn't say stuff that you'd have to walk back on later.

No, that was good. That was good. That's true. So yeah, thank you for helping me realize

I needed to make that clear. In our souls, in ourselves and in our churches, we want theology that's biblical and then underneath that umbrella, we have all those things that Dan was talking about.

We've got four minutes and so we can kind of recap those things next week, the next time that we're together and then finish the list.

But I think it looks like based on who's watching, the first part was popular.

The Greg Lark part. But hopefully people will continue to watch through the rest of it as we talk about theology that's biblical because it's so important.

And I'll share the gospel before we leave. We want everybody to hear the gospel.

We want everybody, there's no more name, there's no other name on this earth that's more beautiful throughout all of history because Jesus is

God himself and he came down and became 100 % God, 100 % man for the glory of God because he loves his creation.

And we will never, even Christians will never fully understand that statement.

That God loves his creation. God loves people. Why? Because we became his enemies, because we willfully and continue to willfully sin against a perfect holy

God who created us, who loved us, who sent someone to rescue us.

And yet we still willingly sin and rebel against him. We who are his enemies became his friend only because of Jesus Christ and what he did.

God sent his one and only son to this earth to rescue sinners.

He was born of a virgin. He lived a perfect sinless life. He was crucified, buried, rose from the grave and then ascended into heaven where he now he sits at the right hand of the father, place of authority, interceding for us and ruling and reigning.

And God calls all men everywhere to repent of their sins and put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

If we do that, he will grant us everlasting life. He will grant us repentance.

He will grant us faith and he will grant us everlasting life. We will become a child of God.

We will be born again. All those fancy biblical words, God will change us and God will save us and rescue us.

We must turn to him in submission to who he is and turning from our sins, putting our faith and trust completely in him.

And so we offer that call to everyone who's watching.

And if you already know him and you're already saved, we would encourage you to continue to offer that call out as you live out your life daily.

With that being said, come to Christ today. Claude, do you mind to close us in prayer? Yes, sir.

Heavenly fathers, we come before your throne right now. I just want to come to thank you and to praise you for who you are.

I thank you and I praise you that you are the creator, the redeemer, the sustainer of life.

Thank you for your mercy. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you,

God, for your long suffering, for your patience. Lord, we thank you for sending your son to die for our sin and that your son arose on the third day and that through him, now we have everlasting life.

Thank you for my brothers in Christ, ones that aren't on here right now and the ones that are on here right now.

Thank you for our family in Christ Jesus, brothers and sisters in Christ. You have united us together in the fellowship of the gospel.

And for that, we praise you. I love you, Lord. In Jesus' name

I pray, amen. Amen. Thank you guys for watching.

And remember that Jesus is king. Go live in the victory of Christ. Go speak with the authority of Christ and continue to go out and share the gospel of Christ.