Ways to Discourage Your Pastor 

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00:11

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Finally, at last, alas,

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Steve Cooley's back in the studio. Would you consider this to be a studio? Who? What?

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I say Steve's back. No co -listeners, what's your response? Come on.

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That seems so natural. It seems so natural. Well, you know,

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I could say this one. That would be closer to accurate.

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I watched the end of Planet of the Apes the other day just for fun. I wanted to see that final scene. Steve, did you know that when they were figuring out the show and they were writing it, they couldn't really figure out a good ending, so they hired

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Rod Serling of Twilight Zone to do it?

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Yeah, because we're all supposed to go, whoa. When I was a kid,

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I went to Westroads on a Sunday. It was a mall and they had a cinema there and it was

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Planet of the Apes marathon. And I don't know what else you do when you're a kid in Nebraska on a sunny Saturday except sit and watch eight hours of Planet of the

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Apes. I totally would have done that. 100%. Well, I think people do

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Lord of the Rings stuff now, right? The marathon. Well, I mean, that's quality.

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I mean, I would have gone for the trashy, you know, Planet of the Apes beneath the Planet of the Apes battle. Did you know in successive shows in the

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Planet of the Apes, they didn't have enough budget for a lot of makeup?

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So only the main actors really had makeup that looked good and the guys in the back, they had masks and stuff.

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And you can see it if you watch carefully. Well, you know, this is why people tune in to No Compromise Radio.

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That's information you just won't get anywhere else. I mean, you listen to Bible shows, you know, do you really learn about Planet of the

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Apes? No. Well, so many people say, I don't like the banter in front of the podcasts, you know, the front end of the podcast and what people eat or drink or watch or anything like that.

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But they always say they love Planet of the Apes discussions. Yeah, it's way up there. All right.

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So anything you want to give us an update on since it's been probably months since you've been in here? Months?

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I think it's been years. No co -years. I have a cough button, by the way, but you don't know that.

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No, I did not know that. So if you wanted to cough, there it is. There it's not. Okay, I'll just raise my hand if I have to cough.

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Just point to your throat. Any updates? I don't know. You know, I mean, Janet and I went on a cruise.

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My wife and I went on a cruise. That was lovely. We enjoyed that. You know, just us and 7 ,000 of our closest friends.

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And by the way, that was the church's gift for being here 20 years. So we were glad to do that.

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Yeah, they gave me that and a handshake and, you know. That's not true.

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They let me come back. Well, today, since it's, well,

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I guess it's not October anymore. October is... Kaput. ...is kaput. And, you know, there's days for everything now.

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There's a day for, you know, the rainy day. There's a day, it's a pizza day, annual pizza day.

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And then there's pastor appreciation month in October. Yay. And so we're out of October, but we want you, if you're listening and you don't attend

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Bethlehem Bible Church, we want to talk to you today. Yeah, because we want you to appreciate us.

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No, I feel appreciated at the church. Do you feel appreciated? Very much so. Okay. So this is not for us.

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This is not, we want accolades and attaboys and encouragement. This is for those that aren't at Bethlehem Bible Church.

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If you're at Bethlehem Bible Church, thank you. We appreciate it. But this is kind of for others.

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Yeah. Ways to help your pastor. That's right. Except we're going to use a

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Curtis Thomas book today entitled Life in the Body of Christ. And he has a chapter entitled, kind of a good no -code chapter title, don't you think?

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Ways to Discourage Your Pastor. It's kind of like the opposite game, right?

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Opposite day. Is this a spiritual gift? I have the, pastor, I have the gift of discouragement.

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I wish you'd stop exercising it. By the way, Steve, I know you know this.

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While I was teaching about Jesus, the master encourager, as he sends his men off into gospel ministry and he talks about how blessed they are and approved by God, it made me think of encouragement.

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And so I sent out an email to the church and let's, you know, let's try to encourage. And I think it was a

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Ligonier article on encouragement and let's try to encourage each other. And I got a response from somebody that basically questioned what

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I was doing. And so that would be the top of the list. How to discourage your pastor when he sends out an email that says, let's make sure encouragement starts at home and then in the church, spouses and children, then here's a discouraging email.

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How dare you? Oh, where is she? Don't you have a, how dare you? Oh, on the thing here?

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Yeah, yeah. What do I, what do I have here? Well, I could do something like this.

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And how long have you been on that medication? She doesn't even, she stutters when she says it.

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It's not even a good sentence. How long have you been on that medication? So ways to discourage your pastor.

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I'm going to read one of these and then we can just talk. How's that?

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That's fine. Start a gossip chain. See, and I think we may have talked about gossip before, but people don't really understand gossip.

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You know, they think it only applies to talking about things that aren't true.

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No, it actually is. You know, if you just look at Ephesians 4 29, which says that, you know, we should restrict ourselves to edifying speech, speech that builds up, because this is what glorifies the

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Lord who bought us, right? I mean, this is our goal is to glorify

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God and enjoy Him forever, right? To love Him and enjoy Him forever. But gossip is, can be things like,

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I don't really like how the pastor preaches. You know, did you hear, you know, that the pastor did this or, you know, blah, blah, blah.

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I mean, there are a lot of ways to go after the pastor indirectly via gossip. And, you know, so often

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I would just ask, who is being edified? What is the goal of, you know, this little gossip or this little rumor or whatever you're starting?

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How are you trying to build up the body of Christ? Steve, what you said earlier, I'd like to expand on that.

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I think technically I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really know, but I think the law is, it's not slander if it's true, right?

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So if something's true, it's not slanderous. But I would say to Christians out there and myself,

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James chapter 4, do not speak evil against one another, brothers. And so that doesn't mean, that means if it's true or not true, we shouldn't say those things and talk down to other people to put them down to make ourselves look good.

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Well, I mean, just imagine, let's just go with the typical sermon comment. That sermon was really bad. Is that helping the pastor?

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No. Do you think the pastor knows it was bad? Probably if he has any sense whatsoever, like I've never left the pulpit.

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I know when I bomb homiletically. Yes. I mean, I think we do know this.

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I mean, there's no, believe it or not, there's no harsher critic on the face of the planet than me when

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I'm preaching, right? So, does that really help anybody?

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I mean, if the pastor has a track record of poor preaching, well, that's another problem, right?

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Maybe you shouldn't have hired the guy in the first place if he can't preach a lick. But everybody's going to throw out a clinker every now and then.

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So... And then when you are listening to that sermon that's maybe bad homiletically, you can still learn, right?

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You're like, okay, that's good for me to understand that passage. I saw it in context. He wasn't as verbose and, sorry, as eloquent as Adrian Rogers, but I still could learn the passage.

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And by the way, if you're a pastor, that's a good thing to do. That is, preach verse by verse because at least they're going to get

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Bible in the midst of their muddled message. How do you like that alliteration?

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That was pretty good. I thought you were going to say, you know, as a pastor, it's a good thing to do. Give them a clinker every now and then.

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That's true. That's true. Show irritation when an important point in the pastor's message lengthens the pastor's sermon five or 10 minutes beyond its usual length.

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I mean, can you just imagine the audible, oh, I can't believe this. I'm going five more minutes today because I need to finish this point.

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No. I don't think you should say, I'm going to go five more minutes. I think you just do.

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Yeah. Yeah. All right. How do you discourage pastors? Always expect other members to do the work that needs to be done, right?

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So... Yeah. I mean, I think there are, like, you know, the pastors ask for somebody to do something, right, at the church.

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This is a ministry that needs to get done. Maybe it's something mundane, right? And everybody just thinks someone else will do this.

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Well, that doesn't solve the pastor's problem. And he winds up, and now

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I would argue that basically in that scenario, it needs to get handed off to the deacons anyway.

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Right, right. So that they, you know, because what are deacons for? They're to remove the mundane from the elders.

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That's what they should be trying to do. So... On No Compromise Radio, we're in a backhanded way, in a reverse way, inverted way, we're trying to tell you, dear listeners, if you're not at Bethlehem Bible Church, encourage your pastor.

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How do you encourage your pastor? Sometimes people think it's just saying to the pastor, I appreciate you writing him a letter,

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I appreciate you. But there's other things like this one that we see in a negative way in the book.

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Go to the lake on summer Sundays rather than to church. Oh, yeah. I don't think people realize how encouraging it is for pastors who are preaching to have the congregation there.

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Yeah, well, you know, imagine it this way. I think I can put it in a familial context that we'll all understand.

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How does the wife, the mom respond when she, you know, spends a good portion of her day making dinner, and then nobody's there?

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And the situation is analogous because pastors put a lot of time into their sermons. And then, you know, you're just like, yeah, it's such a pretty day, though.

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And other people are like, oh, it's a beautiful day. It's too good of a day. I mean, think about that. It's too good of a day for me to go to church.

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I mean, it's absurd, isn't it? Well, you know this, Steve. It's been my philosophy, and I'm sure it's yours, whether I'm the pastor or not.

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When I had children in the house, I didn't want them to say, are we going to church today? Now, maybe if there was two feet of snow, maybe if there was,

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I don't know, COVID first started, there are reasons. But nine times out of ten,

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I want the children to go, well, where are we going is a better question, right? If we're out of town, maybe there's a flight on a

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Sunday morning, and you're stuck in a country or something. But we just want to make sure we teach the children where we're going today, because the

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Lord's Day is important. I mean, if a lava -filled chasm opens up between you and the church, okay, well, you know, there's a problem there.

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You know, I might not be able to get to church because we'd have to drive through lava today. Okay. I'm totally – but, you know, like, well, we got free tickets to go to fill in the blank, or the kids really wanted to do this.

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Or I thought, you know, I just don't understand because it's not about ultimately, that one isn't about the pastor.

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It's about, okay, what am I teaching the kids about the Lord Jesus Christ? What am

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I teaching them about salvation, about thankfulness, about what it means to serve the body, you know, about what it means to just be basically a

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Christian? What do Christians do? Well, on Sunday, what they do is they go and worship the Triune God, and they praise him for their salvation.

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And Steve, if we as preachers don't talk about the

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Lord Jesus, then I think the problems become, I want to say worse, but I'm trying to undo myself out of this direction of the conversation that I didn't want to go to.

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Here's what I wanted to say. We are sinners. We're frail. We're fallible. We don't always do what we're supposed to do.

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That's why the pastor better be talking about Jesus. That was my point. Yeah. And, you know, now here's,

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I'm a sinner, therefore I, you know, sometimes don't feel like going to church. Well, I'm sorry. That's just stupid.

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Then I say, override your feelings and just go, and you'll be glad you did. Yes. I regularly tell people,

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Steve, you probably do too. They're new to the church or they say, I want to get involved. I say, you know what? Do me a favor.

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Get here 15 minutes early. Stick around for 15, 20 minutes after that.

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Here's my cough button for Steve. And look around. See things.

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Oh, I noticed the trash wasn't dumped. You dumped the trash. I noticed such and such wasn't put away. The hymnals weren't right.

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I noticed there was, I don't know, some of the flower petals that fall has fallen from the bouquet up on the front of the platform, whatever it might be.

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Greet people. Hi, how are you? Just walk around. Think about how could I encourage other people?

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And that's a great way to encourage the pastor because I'm trying to do that, but I can't get around to everyone. And so there's simple little things like that.

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The other option is, Steve, you are late because you stayed out late on Saturday night and then you're late on Sunday morning, but the

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Dunkin' Donuts run we have to get. And then you saunter into church 20 minutes late with the

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Dunkin' Donuts. And you can raise it high and lift it up towards the pulpit.

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Obviously, there are times to be late. You have a flat tire, children, something happens and there's a blowout in the diapers in the driveway.

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And you think, I've just got to take care of this with little ones. But most of the time, I think it probably encouraged your pastor, dear listener, if you're on time.

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I mean, just think, you're going into work on Tuesday. I don't want to make it a

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Monday thing. You're going to work on Tuesday and you show up 25 minutes late. The boss goes, hey, what happened today,

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Steve? And you go, yeah, the line at Starbucks, killer. What? You know, you're late because the

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Starbucks line was long. No. No, no, no.

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I'm sure, dear listener, you like to encourage your pastor. So, we're just trying to give you a few ways to do that, even though it might not be, oh, this is an encouragement card.

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How about here's one on the discouraging side, resent new people who come into the fellowship. I mean, who are they to sit in my seat?

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Right? I mean, that's the number one, hey, pal, that's where we sit every week.

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I mean, come on. Or, you know, just resent them for other reasons, like, you know, the pastor's spending all his time talking to these new people.

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What about me? Well, don't you think, Steve, some of this goes back to we pay you to do the work, and therefore you have to do the work?

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And in some regard, that is true, right? We pay you money so you don't have to do plumbing all day, so you should have more time to do things.

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There's something here by Kurt Thomas about let the pastor alone do all the home and hospital visitation. I would say

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I'm encouraged at Bethlehem Bible Church because lots of people visit folks. We have a lady named

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Eileen at the church, and she's just lost her husband, Chuck, and I got an email from Eileen a couple days ago.

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These are all the people that have come over in the last two weeks to visit me. That's encouraging to me, encouraging to her, and we didn't even have to say that.

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The body just knew. So, if you're listening and you're not here at the church, Bethlehem Bible Church, that's a good thing to do.

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If you see a need, you just meet it. I mean, there's a shocking idea, right? I mean, again, to take it into the mundane, and by the mundane,

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I mean the real world. If you're working at a business and you see something that needs to get done, there are two options.

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One is you can go to the boss and say, hey, you know, this really needs to get done. The second thing you can do is just do it yourself.

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And which is better? Well, for some people, I mean, it's the same kind of mentality.

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If I'm working somewhere and I have worked, you know, outside of the church, if I'm working somewhere and I see a problem,

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I address it. I don't have to, you know, ask permission. I know what the rules are, and I just go do it.

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And I think within the church, same thing. Hey, pastor, you know, I noticed there's spoiled food items in the refrigerator.

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Well, thank you for that, you know. Steve, our church has changed so much over the years for the better and maturing, and that stuff doesn't hardly ever happen.

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But when I first got here, I got a call one day, landline right there.

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That's what pretty much everybody had. And they said, well, we drove past the church, Pastor Mike, and the lights are on inside.

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We just thought we'd let you know. One guy also called me and said, the front door's open, like wide open.

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We thought we'd let you know. And I said, I mean, sometimes I'm too blunt, but I said, didn't you stop and close?

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Did you stop and close it? No, no, we just wanted to let you know. It's kind of like the guy with the small church here in New England.

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And I was talking to him, and he said, you know, people here at the church never serve. I have to get there early, turn on the heater, turn on the lights, do this, do that.

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And of course, it's not below a pastor to do that. I was happy to be a janitor at a church for some time.

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It's not past me to pick up trash, and I often do here at the church. But I said, well, ask a couple other people on a rotation if they'd get there early to open up the church and turn on the heater.

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And then if they don't do it, just one day don't turn it on, and people will show up cold, and they'll start figuring it out.

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It's a fact. It's a fact. I mean, it just reminds me, I mean,

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I have a neighbor, and one night, for whatever reason, you know, we didn't close the garage.

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So my neighbor texts me, and he says, hey, did you know that your garage is wide open? And I said, no, thank you.

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I mean, if my neighbor will do that for me, right, how much more? And by the way, he just lives across the street.

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So, you know, I'm sure if he could have, he would have just walked across the street and closed it. But I'm like, why wouldn't we do the basic things?

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I have to say, if I drove by somebody's house in the church, and I noticed the front door was open, and I knew nobody was home,

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I would at least go over and close it, if not close, call the police or something and say, hey, you know, there might be a burglar there or something.

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You know, I mean, but to just say, hey, dude, you know, your front door is open.

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Well, there are certain people at the church, we could probably name 50 of them that would go out of their way to do something that needed to be done, and they didn't even have to ask.

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Yeah. Right. From the Gary Lozos to Christine Capabianca to other people, you just go, they just go serve.

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That's right. They serve. They don't need to ask. All right. We're trying to figure out ways that you can encourage your pastor that maybe you don't even know is an encouraging thing.

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You're like, I do these things. I get there early. I show up and there's preaching. You don't know that you're encouraging your pastor, but you really are, so good job.

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Here's another way to discourage your pastor, set in the negative tone by Thomas, fail to realize that your pastor must keep some things in confidence and thus cannot explain some things fully.

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Yeah, I need to know everything, right? I mean, here to kind of put a little emphasis on this, if you come to the pastor in confidence, would you then want him to turn around and tell everybody at the church what you told the pastor in confidence?

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And in the same way, you have to respect the others, right? Whether it's they came to the pastor in confidence or the pastor learned of something and he's like, okay, this would be a shame for me to reveal to others before I've even had a chance to go talk to this person, before I've had a chance to sort things out and kind of process it.

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Maybe there's more involved than I know. There are a lot of reasons why we don't just blurt out everything we know, and you shouldn't want that.

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Well, that is so true. Here's an example of something that might come up in your churches, the listeners' churches.

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There's some kind of sin, and people know about that sin in the church that somebody's committed, and then there's no announcement from the pulpit about that sin.

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And what I mean by that is, or how you should translate that, if your church does address sin, if your church does believe in Matthew 18 in church discipline, if your church does want to honor the

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Lord and deal with sin that's unrepentant, if there's sin in the church that's grievous and there's no announcement made, and the leaders know about it, the sin, then you should say as a congregate, it must have been dealt with.

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If it's not been dealt with, then you should expect some announcement from the church, step three of church discipline.

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So, if it's not been announced, dear congregation out there, not Bethlehem Bible Church, because I know you know, it's like, okay, it's dealt with at the highest level, and that's why there's no announcement, because it's been dealt with.

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Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, well, to put it another way, let me just ask you, if something has been dealt with, why does the congregation then have a need to know, right?

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If the elders have dealt with a sinful situation, why would you want to know, you know, how it was dealt with?

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I mean, you know, read through Matthew 18 and see where that is. And if it's a sin that's, you know, on a smaller,

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I don't mean any sin small, but on a smaller, it has smaller reach, that is, it's affecting a few people, then it needs to be dealt with within that realm of the few people.

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If the sin is, there's a scandal with the pastor because he's had an affair, then it's dealt with at a higher level there, right?

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Then it's okay, here's what we need to do. But if it's just some, somebody's, you know, there's a marriage and a divorce, and there's no announcement made about the divorce, well, then you ought to assume as a congregant to encourage the pastor, oh, that's been dealt with.

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Petey Yeah. It was, there were biblical grounds for it, or however it was all resolved, the elders know it, and they did what was right.

25:15

Jared Amen. All right, Steve, maybe one last one, how to discourage your pastor. Talk frequently about the weaknesses of the

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Church. Petey So helpful. You know, rather than focus on strengths of the

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Church, rather than focus on the good things that you see, pick at it, right?

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I mean, this is like, and you can overuse this analogy, but in terms of the marriage, you know, you're married, you have a wife, you can, or a husband, you can either drone on endlessly about their faults, even though they may be like really small things, and in the big scheme of things, you go,

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I'm really thankful for my wife. Now, let me tell you the things she doesn't do well, right?

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I'm really thankful for my Church. Now, let me just say some of the things that I don't think are done well.

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Better, better response. Talk about the things that are good at the

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Church, and then you personally do something about the weaknesses.

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Amen. And even if it's prayer, even if it's asking, you know, I notice we don't have, you know, a youth group or this, that, and the other.

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Is there any way I could help? Or we don't seem to have as much fellowship as, well, I guess you shouldn't phrase it that way, but I'd like to help the

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Church with more fellowship, Pastor. Can we do the suppers for six at our house or anything like that? I mean, we as pastors,

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I think we know, Steve, the weaknesses of the Church, maybe more than other people do. I know my own weaknesses.

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And I'm thinking, you know what? People put up with me. Don't we live in light of sovereign grace of God?

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And if the Church is kind of pietistically fundamentalistic, walking on eggshells, that's one thing.

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But if it's, you know what? We're all sinners. It's transforming grace. Jerry Bridges, we're thankful to be forgiven.

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And so, we overlook the faults of others. Isn't that a better way to run? Way better way to run.

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And I mean, you know, I mentioned earlier, there's no such thing as the gift of complaints, you know, kind of grumbling and disputing,

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I don't think are ever really promoted or praised. Well, one of these things is complain to your pastors about others.

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Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's helpful. I mean, seriously, if you just think –

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I would encourage everybody to kind of, yes, it's the Lord's Church, but if you think this isn't

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Pastor Mike's Church, this isn't Pastor Steve's Church, this isn't Pastor Billy's Church, whoever your pastor is, it's my church, you know, and I love this church, and I want to help this church, and I want to help this pastor.

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It kind of gives you a whole different perspective on things, you know, am

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I really helping when I do these negative things? And the answer, of course, is no. Steve, but what if I disagree with a certain theological fine point of the pastor?

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You know, I was just talking to somebody not in our church, talking to somebody the other day about this very thing, and I said in very kind language, not like I'm about to say, shut up.

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And why would I say that? Because you're not helping. Doing that never – if you disagree over a fine point,

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I think it's fine to go out and get a cup of coffee with the pastor and say, help me to understand why we do this instead of that.

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Fine. But if you think, well, you know, he really misinterpreted this passage or whatever,

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I don't know what to tell you, except I can guarantee you that pastor spent 15, 20 hours studying that passage.

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You did not. And if you think you know more than he does, maybe you do, but it doesn't help anybody for you to go to him and say, you know, you really,

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I think you've made a hash out of interpreting that. Right. I think

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I misspoke the other day, and I was talking about Jesus, Prophet, Priest, and King, and Prophet, Moses, Deuteronomy 18, and maybe it was just my voice, and somebody came up to me and said, where,

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Pastor, is Jesus, the greater prophet, going to come from? Where in Deuteronomy? And I said, well, 18.

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And the person said, I think you said eight from the sermon. And maybe I just didn't say 18 loud enough.

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That was a good way to say it. And, you know, okay, here's newsflash for everyone.

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And we're going to go five to 10 minutes later on the sermon, because we need to have an important point of our message, just like our first complaint.

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I want to announce to the world that Pastor Steve disagrees with me and has differences on certain minor fine points of theology.

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Not many, but a few. Is that true? Mm hmm. It's probably true. My wife sometimes disagrees with me on fine points of theology.

30:29

So, do you have to measure up perfectly with these folks that preach the Word? Now, if they're teaching some kind of weird false doctrine, that's one thing.

30:39

But if they're solid and they're preaching through the Bible verse by verse, you should go, you know what? They're within the statement of faith, they're within the confession, and we're just glad for that.

30:49

How many passages, Steve, have three different interpretive options?

30:56

A lot. And people don't even, people don't even, until you really dig through it, you know, they used to call it...

31:05

Exegetical Digest? No, well, one of our professors used to call those difficult passages or something like that, you know, where there's three or four or five different views and you had to analyze all the views and then, you know, pick the one that you liked.

31:22

Well, a lot of times there are good men on different sides of these things and you go, okay.

31:30

You know, and you just have to say, but you have to humbly say, well, I think it's this or whatever.

31:36

But when you preach and here's kind of where I want to go, you know, because sometimes this doesn't happen often, but sometimes

31:43

Mike will say, you know, I'm trying to figure this out. And, you know, there's three or four different views on this one part of the passage.

31:52

And so, sometimes I'll say, because I'll think about it for a minute and I'll go, Mike, how does that preach?

31:58

And you'll go, you're right, it doesn't. I need to move on, you know, because sometimes those problem passages aren't really, when you're preaching through it, it's ultimately not the point of the sermon because they're just kind of like, they're interesting to us because they're academic exercises.

32:18

But when you analyze your sermon, you go, yeah, this doesn't, it doesn't impact my sermon at all.

32:25

Steve, that is so true. And when you were on the cruise, I started the Sermon on the

32:30

Plain in Luke chapter 6 and the Sermon on the Mount is Matthew 5, and there's all kinds of ink spilled on, are they the same?

32:40

Right? Jesus comes down from the mountain a little bit and there's a plateau and that's what Luke 6 is. He's up a little higher, maybe in Matthew 5.

32:48

There's fewer words in Luke 6. Maybe he's talking to the Gentiles. He adds the woes in Luke 6.

32:54

Jesus expands such and such in Matthew 5. Pour in spirit, Luke 6,

33:00

I mean, Matthew 5, pour in Luke and all this stuff. And I just, for 30 seconds,

33:06

I said something about it and then I'm off and running because I don't need to do that. This isn't a Greek exegesis class.

33:12

That's right. That's exactly right. Sometimes, you know, and this is going to sound like, and I'm not doing this,

33:19

I don't want to make sound smarter than we are, but you know, sometimes we can get so hung up in the academic arena where we just go, wait a minute, you have to step back and go, nobody cares about that.

33:33

And that's not the point of this sermon anyway. So, why am I going to spend time on that?

33:38

You know? The same thing happened, Steve, when I said, just only briefly, because I used to teach

33:45

Matthew 5, the Beatitudes. This is almost like the human side of God's working in salvation.

33:52

I recognize I'm poor in spirit, I'm mourning over sin, and that's how I teach it.

33:58

It's like an evangelistic context. But I thought, you know what? That's not it. This is Jesus telling his men that he's going to send out to do gospel ministry.

34:06

It's going to be hard, and by the way, you're blessed, and there's a payoff in the end. But that's about all

34:11

I said. I didn't need to get into the 19 points why I thought Lloyd -Jones was wrong. Why?

34:19

Yeah, well, I mean, there's a, I mean, I've heard, I tried to never do this, but I've heard guys go, you know, there are three different reasonable interpretations of this, and then they explain all three.

34:34

And then they go, you know, this is what I landed on because blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, this is not a sermon, you know?

34:43

I would give them a pass if it was something, okay, baptism for the dead in 1

34:48

Corinthians. There are 42 different options. People think it could be this, this, or that.

34:54

Let me tell you why I think it's this. And then off you go, right? And so, here's one of the things that I want to do, and we should probably wrap up the show.

35:01

If you listen to your pastor preach and you're on the inside in terms of the theological fine points and precision, you should say to yourself, while he didn't give my view,

35:11

I could tell he knows my view. I can, I know, for me, when I preach and I think, well,

35:18

Cooley might not agree with this, but he can tell, he can tell that I know what

35:24

I'm doing. Right. I landed on something else, and Pradeep with his PhD says, I don't really know about that one, but I see that's a valid option.

35:32

Yes. That's what we're after. Yeah, because I mean, again, this, and we don't want to overstate this.

35:40

It's not like, you know, every sermon, there's like six different possible interpretations because what we talk about,

35:46

I think they're called problem passages. When you come to one of those, they're few and far between, and they ultimately don't change the bigger meaning.

35:58

It's like Matthew 16, 18, you know, who's the rock, you know, or what is the rock that's being built upon?

36:08

You know, is it Jesus? Is it the confession of Jesus? Is it Peter? You know, blah, blah, blah. Well, how much does that shape your sermon?

36:16

And ultimately, it's not a whole lot unless you're Catholic, which if you're

36:26

Catholic and you're listening to the show, I would encourage you to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ alone. Yeah, but pastor on the

36:34

Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, it says Holy Catholic Church. Yeah, well, that's small

36:39

C there, son. So dial it back. It means universal. Well, Steve, thanks for coming back on the show after your hiatus.

36:50

I appreciate that. More to come with the Tuesday Guide. Steve's clapping right now.