Moral Obligation

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton. And with me are. Michael Bierman. David Cassin. Andrew Hudson. We had an interesting question that we had sent in to us and we waited till Dave was in the studio with us because we knew he would have the spiciest takes.

Yeah. So we'll go ahead and read it now. As a Christian. I want his Anglican takes. Oh. Well, are you saying

English food is not spicy, sir? World renowned for it.

Kill him. We gotta make it to the question. Great opener. As a Christian, do you not feel a moral responsibility to speak out about the genocide happening in Gaza?

Children are starving while Israel blocks humanitarian aid. How can that possibly align with Christ's teachings?

Would you feel the same silence if it were your own kids? Also, where is your voice when families are being torn apart by ice?

And by this, he's talking about the immigration, the immigration enforcement.

These are real lives being shattered. I'm genuinely curious how you reconcile these tragedies with your faith.

And we'll start off with Michael and the spicy takes hit later. Okay. So it's hard to convey this in, you know, reading it out loud, but Christian is in parentheses.

So as a so -called Christian, quote unquote, Christian, do you not feel a moral responsibility to speak out about the genocide happening in Gaza?

I have no moral responsibility whatsoever to speak out about moral genocide in Gaza, none whatsoever.

I have no burden on me about that at all. The fact that there are a lot of people being killed in Gaza I would say, yeah, that's a bad thing.

Am I morally responsible to say something? Meaning am

I, you know, if you ask me a question about it, I'll talk to you about it. Do I need to go around saying things all the time?

Do I have that moral responsibility that my job, if I have a mic on a podcast, if I have a pulpit to preach from, if I have some sort of social media presence, am

I supposed to be walking in it? Do I have a moral responsibility that if I don't go around talking about how bad genocide is, whether it's

Gaza, well, what about the genocide of Christians in Nigeria? What about the genocide in Yemen?

What about, you know, what about all these other - And then Ukraine. Yeah. So you could just replace Gaza with a score of other horrific ongoing tragedies today.

Okay. Now, why is Gaza being picked out? Well, this questioner thinks that this is the current thing, right?

The shirt says, I support the current thing, right? The current thing is the gospel to these people though, right?

Yeah, whatever the current thing is, it's the gospel, and you have to be on the right side of the gospel. This is your virtue, this is your -

And you must proclaim it, otherwise you're immoral. So why is Gaza the thing to talk about? Because the media told me so, right?

So not the Bible told me so, but the media told me so.

The media told me this is the most important thing. So why aren't Christians, you know, virtuous?

Why aren't they moral? Why aren't they talking about the most important thing? Well, listen, genocide, the wholesale slaughter of humans by humans for unrighteous reasons and unrighteous means and so on.

Yeah, guess what? That's evil, that's bad. Okay, if you ask me a question about it, sure. Do I have more responsibility to go around all the time talking about whatever the problems are in the world?

No, I do not. I am under no obligation at all. Children are starving while Israel blocks humanitarian aid.

Yeah, they're blocking humanitarian aid, and I bet they're probably blocking some other things too. You know, it's kind of like, you know, there are all sorts of horrific things that happened in war, okay?

And sometimes soldiers, armies, they kill families, they kill children, they kill pregnant women, war is awful, okay?

And also sometimes the enemy straps bombs to children and pregnant women and they go kill soldiers, okay?

And sometimes humanitarian aid smuggles in all kinds of things that some nation state doesn't want smuggled in.

And so they're blocking humanitarian aid. People are starving and dying and they would rather have it that way. I'm not justifying what they're doing,

I'm just explaining it. And it's unsurprising to me. And it's awful, it's horrific, it's war.

Children are starving while Israel blocks humanitarian aid. How can that possibly align with Christ's teachings? Well, it doesn't.

But there seems to be an assumption here that for some reason, because I'm quote unquote a Christian, that I need to be on Israel's side.

Or that you automatically are. Yeah, that is coming through in this.

But the political state of Israel, like a whole lot of other nation states, is full of bad actors, full of evil men doing evil things for evil motivations.

And there is nothing special, holy, protected, or biblical about the political state of Israel.

I mean, there's nothing for me to say in defense of the nation state of Israel.

They're not my responsibility. I have no obligation to them. To clarify your statement, you're saying that the modern nation of Israel has no connection to Old Testament or Old Covenant Israel?

Not unless they become a Christian nation. They just, they happen to share a name. Yeah, they share a name.

If their leadership bows the knee to Jesus Christ as Lord and says, we're going to, hey, you know, we think that he's the most important person ever.

And we think that he is the king of all the rulers of the earth. And we wanna kiss the sun and as judges of the earth submit to his rule and reign.

Then I might have something to say. It's like, you know, I'm glad to hear that they've confessed that. And if they live inconsistently with that, then

I might feel some need to say something to someone around me to help clarify the situation.

But I have absolutely no burden to bear for the political state of Israel nor for the genocide happening in Gaza whatsoever.

If evil things are happening, those are evil. If tragic things are happening, those things are tragic.

I'm curious, I'm genuinely curious. Why does the questioner think that he or she or anybody else is so wholly apart from the situation has any moral obligation to say anything about it?

Where are you getting that burden from? Where are you getting that guilt from? What's going on?

Well, he says, so he goes on. Would you feel the same silence if it were your own kids? No. Different.

Yeah, because that's different. Because families exist, they're a thing. Nations exist, they're a thing, right?

Like neighbors exist, those are real. I actually, I really have neighbors. There's a passage in Proverbs chapter three that talks about not defrauding your neighbor.

Why? Because he lives next to you for safety, right? Neighbors are a real thing. Nations are a real thing.

Families are a real thing. And I have an order of love, order of Morris. I have a responsibility, a hierarchy of responsibility to my wife, to my children, to my church, to my extended family, my neighbor, my nation.

I have responsibilities to these folks and I will have obligations that attend to those.

But what of people who are not my neighbors? They could be my neighbors if I live there.

They may look different from me and still be my neighbors. If they look really different from me, they're definitely not of my family, but they could be my neighbors.

I could, and I would have responsibility to them if I live next to them. If we choose to be under the same responsibilities, then yes, but they're not my responsibility.

I don't have any connection to them. I'm not saying that I am unmoved by news of tragedy or that I would say it doesn't matter that people are dying.

I'm not saying it doesn't matter. It does matter. I know it matters to God, but I also know that that's his responsibility.

It's not mine. I think this questioner may ask or respond to that.

It sounds like what you're saying, because it doesn't affect me, I don't really care. Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, it's outside of the realm of your responsibility. Your responsibility, your God -given responsibility, it's outside your realm.

But what does that language care? That taking care of something is taking responsibility for something.

I take care of my wife. I take care of my kids. I take care of my church. I take care of my neighborhood.

I take care of my citizenship, my obligations. I take care. Why? Because I am responsible.

I have one Lord, praise God. I have one Lord, and he's told me what

I'm to care for as a steward. I am his slave, he is my master, and he has told me how to care for my stewardship that he is entrusted to me.

If I don't have that one Lord, then I have a thousand Lords, all telling me

I must care. I must care. I must care. And that is a, wow, that's a lot of enslavement.

But I have liberty in Christ because I'm only to care what he wants me to care for.

Now, it may be that he somehow puts me in a position where I need to care about things I don't care about yet. Saying that, please hear me carefully, it's not that I have no feelings whatsoever about horrible things that happen.

If I hear about a horrible tragedy, it has nothing to do with me, well, I feel bad. Oh, that makes me feel bad.

Does that mean that I now need to take responsibility for it somehow? And go about and parade and talk about it?

No, I don't have that burden. So when it says, also, where's your voice when families are being torn apart by ice?

These are real lives being shattered. So it's interesting to me, it says, would you feel the same silence if it were your own kids?

Your own kids, also, where's your voice when families are being torn apart by ice? Now, this is a different scenario.

It says, one, it was way over there. It's a geopolitical, it's something on the other side of the world. And it's something that is completely outside your sphere of influence.

Now you have a scenario where it is your next door neighbor, or maybe a couple doors down on the same street as you, going back to that example that you care for your neighbor.

What about them? Now it's in your neighborhood. It's almost in your house. It's supposed to be closer to home, right?

But notice that there's a expressed concern about families. There's an assumption that there is a higher priority of relationships within families.

That families would be torn apart seems to be, in the voice of the questioner, a bigger issue than other things.

This isn't neighborhoods being torn apart, it's families being torn apart. An indication that families are more priority, which is what

I was just saying earlier. There is a difference if it's my kids versus somebody else's. I'm required to care for my kids in a way that I'm not required to care for others, okay?

Now, the question about, well, what about families being torn apart by ice? Well, you know what?

If I hear a story about that, I will feel sad. Yeah, oh, I would feel for children who are being taken away from their parents.

And if their parents are being sent back to whatever land they came from, because they came here breaking the law and defying the law and brought their kids here.

Then get the kids back as quickly as possible to them. Yeah. Get their kids in that position. Yeah. To me, that doesn't make any sense at all.

Get the whole family together and put them back where they came from. Including the children.

Yeah, including, obviously. Obviously, the government has no business taking children away from parents just because the government disagrees with the parents on some level, right?

Now, if the parents are indeed endangering the lives of the children, then that's one thing, okay?

But if the parents have made a choice that is not endangering their children, they're actually, the parents made a choice to try to do something good for their children.

They think it's terrible living in one of these countries that is full of impoverishment and bad policies.

I wanna get my children to a land of prosperity, okay? And they think that they can get it.

Well, you know what? The United States government disagrees with your choices. All right, so what are you gonna do?

You're gonna take the kids away from the parents and raise them as orphans in the United States and then send the parents back to some other country?

That doesn't sound right. I think it's terrible. I think it's terrible that Child Protective Services break up families because the child wants gender -affirming care surgery and the parents say no, and then

Child Protective Services break up the family and take the children away from the parents. I think that that's a shame.

I think it's a shame that feminism destroys families, that feminism teaches women to divorce their husbands and destroy families and take children away from fathers, and that the society that is nurtured by feminism treats fathers as the enemy of children.

I think that abortion destroys human lives. I think that's terrible. Now, the question is, the question is, these are real lives being shattered.

Yeah, that's happening all over the place. But the first part of this question has to do with, don't you feel like you have a moral responsibility to speak out?

Where is your voice? That seems to be the question. I'm gonna put this to all of it, but don't we have a moral responsibility to care for the poor, defend the innocent, rescue the dying,

AKA abortion? Do we not have a responsibility, a moral responsibility to speak out, to make sure our elected leaders know what the word of God says?

Even going to city council meetings or going to our state capitol and talking to our representatives, do we not have a moral responsibility to that?

Why wouldn't we have a moral responsibility for the families on our streets?

So - Sorry, devil's advocate a little bit, but that is throwing that one out there for you guys as well.

So the scriptures talk about the church as the pillar in support of the truth and that the magistrate is there to punish evildoers and praise doers of righteousness.

How does the magistrate know who are the evildoers and who are the doers of righteousness? Well, they should listen to the king of all the rulers of the earth.

Yeah, they're sovereign. They're sovereign. Even as David's sitting upon his throne, my

Lord said to my, the Lord said to my Lord. So there's somebody over the king or somebody over the magistrate and the church is to speak to the magistrate and say, hey, this is what righteousness looks like.

Hey, this is what evil looks like. You should praise workers of righteousness and you should punish workers of evil.

And so the church should be informing the magistrates of what that is. Even as we preach and evangelize and make disciples of all the nations, we're teaching everyone how to bow the knee to Christ.

Yes. So that, but okay, in that vein, this is not the same thing as here is a particularly tragic scene.

I must now speak to that particular tragic scene and be dictated to by whatever is highlighted as the thing to care about in this moment.

Whatever the media now says, this is the most important thing for you to care about now. And then

I'm required to now say something about it. That the agenda is not to be set by the framers of tragedy.

The agenda is set by the king. So it's not that, this list of things that are mentioned, you know,

ICE, Gaza, these are talking points from somebody, from a leftist perspective, say these are the issues that you should be concerned about.

Somebody from another perspective would say, unless you're talking, unless you are constantly coming out and preaching against abortion and standing on corners with signs, you are unrighteous.

This is the only issue that we need to be caring about. Everything else pales in far comparison. And if you're not out there hollering with the sign, there's something wrong with you.

You don't love Jesus. You're a hypocrite. Okay, now I've heard that before. Oh yeah. Okay, I go to abolition day.

It's always freezing cold. Well, it's February of the year. Always 14 degrees of the 60 mile an hour wind.

It's cold. I go to abolition day, okay. I'm in support of the absolute end of all manner of abortion, full stop.

Yeah, end it now. Yeah, end it. I'm totally for that. But the guys who get up there and preach basically get up there and say, and condemn everybody for not doing enough and say that our country is under the covenantal judgment of curses of God, that Oklahoma is being cursed by God because we have not done enough as Christians to fully get rid of it.

And until we get rid of abortion, we're gonna be living under the Deuteronomic curses of God.

That's always a topic that gets... Corporate guilt. Corporate guilt. Corporate national guilt.

Yeah, well, and statehood guilt even, right? State guilt. Because now the thing is, what is it?

What is it? It's not end abortion now. It was free the states. Used to be called free the states.

And now that row got overturned. Now it's... End abortion. Abolishing abortion or something.

Yeah. And so, okay, like, all right. If... When I listen to them talk about that, it's like, you know,

I'm just kind of reflecting on the matter. It's like, you know what? Of course I'm against abortion. Yeah. And I'd be willing to answer any question anybody gives.

And I'm willing to go... I'm willing to talk to my magistrates about that. And I'll even go out of my way to do so.

And you know what? I have absolute freedom and liberty to do so. And it may be that I'll make a special effort of it.

I have the freedom to go do that. I have the freedom to tell my kids about it. But you know what? I am not under condemnation.

I'm not under condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Listen, it is...

I am not... I do not stand condemned because I'm not always going about with a sign and a bullhorn decrying every evil that I've heard about this last week.

This kind of goes into... In the modern era, both like the left and kind of the neocons absolutizing in moral terms, every single political issue.

So to go back to your question earlier, Dave, the devil's advocate question, you cited scripture about the poor and needy and the dying.

And I would say that an order of more still applies even in that situation, right?

So you would say, what are you doing with your entire street? And that case for us, the order of Morris is call ice on the street.

The issue would be that it is better for our children. It is better for our church.

It is better for our state. It is better for our nation that tens and hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants no longer stay in our country, have our houses, occupy our land and businesses that we can own in place or our children can own.

That's still gonna be applicable. That order of Morris is still gonna be applicable because we're going to be worried about our children first, our church members, our community, which means people who are

Americans, who have this land as their inheritance and not foreigners.

Yeah, so if we had ice come down our street again, this happened before. If I have anything to say to my magistrates about the issue, if I'm gonna write a letter, if I'm gonna speak to somebody, then it's going to be like, you know you need to keep those families together, right?

Right. You do know that, by everything that is righteous and good, you should keep those families together.

It is not good for children, immigrant children to be, and you're not very good at keeping up with immigrant children.

You lose hundreds of thousands of them. Of them. Well, that wasn't ICE. That was a different organization, right?

With Biden? Yeah, well, it was a different administration, but. Was it still ICE? Yeah. There's connections all over the place.

Customs and border security. Yeah, the point is like, you don't keep up with these children and they all end up being trafficked.

So you don't separate them. There's a whole lot of wickedness that comes from being an idiot.

Stop doing that. Keep them together. They don't belong here. They broke the laws. It's not good for them to be here, like you're saying.

But, you know, handle it correctly. And in like manner, okay, so let's say we had a bunch of, oh,

I don't know, Somalis come in and decide that they're going to colonize Oklahoma City. Okay.

There's going to be someone from the leftist cults. They're already very much loud and proud in the

Oklahoma City government. They're going to be like, you know, this is wonderful. We get to show how virtuous we are by giving special consideration for the

Somalis to have everything they want because we want them to be here because they show how virtuous we are, right?

So we're going to be pro -Muslim and pro -Somali culture and we're going to really, really celebrate them and carve out, and then if anybody complains, then we'll know who the enemy is.

Those are the enemies, right? Because you are the moral enemies of all that is holy and good.

But at that point, if, let's say, Islam with its

Quran, with its laws, with its absolute dedication to, there's only the land of peace, that's

Islam, and then there's the land of war, right? And it's all or nothing and they've got a place in a foothold,

I will definitely speak out against that evil. I will definitely say, you know, look, we don't need to give our city over to a cult.

This is a really bad idea. This is a wicked cult and it's high time for it to go away, to quote

Christopher Hitchens, right? It's a wicked cult and it's high time it goes away. That's my opinion on Islam.

And the leaders need to know that this is wickedness and this does not need to be here. This would be terrible for everybody.

Yes, I'll speak out about it. What happens if that, what happens if, you know, we start looking like Dearborn, Michigan?

One of the reasons why Dearborn, Michigan looks the way it does is because people left. Because the leaders wouldn't listen, wouldn't do the right thing, rights just are not being done.

Then you get to be a big pot of wickedness. Bye. You know, the beauty of federalism, we can leave, we can go to a different state, we can go where there's freedom.

And all these people that are packing up and moving and leaving all over the US are doing things that are righteous.

They are leaving places of wickedness where there is no reason and leaders aren't listening and they're getting up and they're moving someplace else and saying, you know, we're not gonna do this anymore.

And at great expense, both socially and economically. Yeah, absolutely.

But let's remember that one of the great Christian virtues is running away. Bravely, bravely run away.

Bravely running away. Sir Robin, that brave, brave Sir Robin ran away. But yes, but this is how the pilgrims first came over.

Like, what are they doing? Running away from the persecution. We wanna be able to - See, I always thought they were running at the

Indians. That's the way I thought of it. Oh, really? Yeah, the English at home weren't, they're kind of softies.

We need to go right at the Indians. But maybe I was taught by a different history teacher than you guys.

Yeah. Wow. But probably, probably so. I just figured the bike wrote this question.

Yeah. I don't know why I'm thinking of the Viking word for anybody that wasn't like them was scrailing. But anyway, no, but the whole idea was we want to raise our families and worship

God in the way that he has told us to without being killed because we're not abiding by these tyrannical laws.

And so they ran away. Okay, well, you know what? It's gonna keep on happening. Can't kill all of us.

I mean, you can't stop all of us. And we're just gonna keep on living, keep on living for our

Lord. And we do need to contend for what is right. We do wanna see righteous cities.

We do wanna see righteous places. We wanna explain, hey, this isn't right. Let's do this over here.

So we do have obligations, yes. But to impose upon me or any

Christian, you have an obligation to use your voice and to care and be burdened by evils that do not touch on your order of more.

They do not touch on what should concern you. No, it's kind of like gossip, honestly.

Like someone comes to me, starts telling me all this, this mess between them and someplace, someone else, all this drama and this backbiting.

At some point, it's like, you're doing a party here. You do know this is none of my business, right?

I understand that you're hurting and I understand that there was some wrong done, but you do know that it doesn't have anything to do with me.

You're gossiping. You're gossiping to me about all this. It's like, shouldn't you go get right with this person and shouldn't you seek a genuine mediator based on what you've already said?

You need to go talk to this person instead of talking to me behind their back. And then you need to go find somebody who can make this right as a mediator or a magistrate.

What are you doing? So that's like a low level example, but when somebody is coming to me and saying, you need to be gravely concerned and burdened and talking about all the problems in the world today.

It's like, no, I don't actually. Number one, there is somebody who is in charge to the minute level who is gravely concerned with this issue and his name is

Jesus Christ. He is King of Kings, Lord of Lords. He's the King of the rulers of the earth. And you know what? This does concern him. This is an issue that I believe that Jesus Christ is fully cognizant of and he hates wickedness and he hates evil and he sees it perfectly.

Amen. And I think he, and, and, and, I think he's going to take care of it. And I think he's gonna judge wickedness and I think he's gonna put it all right.

And I, you know what? I trust him because he's the shepherd and I'm just a sheep and I do not have to carry around the burdens of a shepherd at his level.

Yeah. I mean, the writer of this question would not have that same view.

I mean, God's not doing anything, so we have to do something, even if there is a

God. And the framing of this question, this individual knows what's important to us.

Kids are very important to us. So talks about Israel and Gaza mentions starving children.

Talks about ice, mentions families, children being broken up.

So pulling on those heartstrings, what we would say is that for the most part, when it's someone else's kids, especially on the other side of the world, that's not my problem.

It's not my responsibility. It is not a responsibility that God has given me. So then the next question would be, well, what about when if it's your kids?

Then I care. Yeah. Because that's been placed in my care by that sovereign

Lord who is in charge of everything. And that's not hypocritical. That's right. It's like saying,

I am not to be, but why don't I care about the way in which, let's say a family in India is running their finances about how many rupees they have in their bank.

And are they actually using their money wisely in feeding and clothing their kids?

Or are they drunks? And they're spending all this money on alcohol.

You know, and for some reason, this becomes clear.

Am I supposed to care about that? It's like, well, that seems to be a minor issue, but it's about children.

You know what? Why am I not concerned about that? Because I'm supposed to be concerned about the money in my household, how

I'm using my budget, how am I taking care about my kids? I'm using a family illustration because of the children, but also then you expand it, that the same people who want to push globalist burdens on everybody so that everybody's burdened by the same globalist burdens, everybody's flying the same flags and worried about the same thing and lockstep with all this nonsense.

So we can use move global resources to help on these global problems because we're all in this together. It's like, yeah, they talk about families, but they're using that as a rhetorical device.

They don't actually care about families any more than they care about nations. Because as soon as you admit that families are a thing, the nations are a thing.

So that's why they don't like families and they don't like nations. Like we don't need those things.

We're global citizens. Yeah, exactly. So - Child is the child of the village. So it takes a village to raise a child, doesn't it?

Yeah. It's a rhetorical device. It's a rhetorical device to try to gain a response.

Well, how do we reconcile these tragedies with your faith? So evil is evil because of who

God is and what he says is evil. And God is gonna judge all wickedness at the great day of judgment.

And he's gonna handle it so well that all the saints are going to applaud.

And all the sinners are going to screech, gnash their teeth. Gnashing.

Gnashing and weeping of teeth. And it's going to be perfect. He's gonna handle it so well. And this is why we leave room for wrath.

Leave room for vengeance. Leave room for it. Vengeance is the Lord's, he will repay. And I don't have to be wrathful all the time.

I don't have to go day in and day out and be wrathful about every perceived injustice that I see in the world today.

Why are the leftists, why are the communists in America painting their head blue and green and pink, piercing themselves, cutting themselves, destroying the figure of their face and their body and howling in rage and in hatred over every perceived offense in the world today?

Why are they going nuts? Because there is no day of judgment that they believe in.

Justice will never be done. Justice will never be served. Why did they tear down all the statues?

Because they're trying to judge the dead. These dead men did evil things.

We must judge them. And they know there's no resurrection from the dead. But as Christians, we know there is.

And Jesus will raise all the dead and he's gonna judge all those wicked evil men from the past. And he'll do it according to his terms, not based on ours.

But the reason why the leftist cult, why the communists are so full of hatred and anger is because there is no great day of judgment.

They can't leave room for wrath. They're full of wrath. And it's just hatred and screaming and vitriol all the time.

They're sad, you see. Yeah, yeah, the resurrection. They're sad, you see. And they have to continually raise these people up.

And execute them. Yeah, you always have to. All the talk can never go away. And that's why they're never satisfied.

As soon as they have to go cycle to cycle, they have to find someone new to judge, someone new to destroy, someone new to hate.

And it's, you know, it's - Well, living villains in this case and those from the past.

And so Orwell, okay, you have to have your 20 -minute hate every day.

It's essential for the dystopian society. You have to have your hate every day.

Everyone gathered at the screen. You're told by the screen, who is the new enemy? And everyone must, with great energy together, express their loathing and hatred for whatever you're told to hate that day.

And you have to squash inwardly any thought about, wait, we didn't hate these people yesterday, but you must be lockstep and hate whatever is put in front of you.

And so this is therapeutic. This is, you're not really real, not really being human unless you have something that you can hate and be against.

And all the while, falling in love. It's very Orwellian. But it's an astute observance of human nature.

Meanwhile, Christians can get sucked into this and think, like, I'm not being virtuous and righteous and just and merciful and so on, unless I carry these very same burdens.

And so the gospel coalition and so forth has taken their marching orders. David French has taken his marching orders from the daily hate.

Oh, this is what we're hating today? Okay, here's my little Christian spin on it. Here's my little Christian spin on it.

And they just keep on, Joe Carter, here's my little Christian spin on it. And so we're gonna hate whatever the world hates. Okay, we're gonna join in and say, hey, we're virtuous too.

And we do it better than you. So join us. All right, this is the way we're gonna be winsome and grab the world. And in fact, the scriptures tell us that we are to stop going back and submitting ourselves unto law.

And we're free in Christ. We're free in Christ. And one of the most wonderful things about being a

Christian is that I'm free in Christ, that I know that Christ is all the horizon.

Everything's heading towards him in his preeminence. I am happy to be here. I think Jesus Christ is a good king.

I think he's gonna handle everything just fine. And I think he's ruling and reigning in ways that all manner of people don't want me to see.

But I know he's ruling and reigning really well. And while everybody wants me to be down in the dumps, I'm happy.

I think to be fair to the questioner and listener, it goes in the opposite direction too to anybody saying you have to care about Israel first in this matter as well.

Because that's the same type of moralizing. It's the same type of, here's a law. You must follow it since you're a

Christian. This should be your position. Otherwise you're being unchristian. Right. Because Israel.

Very woke. Yeah. Yeah, so just because it's Israel doesn't mean it's right. And just because somebody says they're a

Christian and does something that doesn't make them right. You know, we have a Lord, we have a king. He tells us what's right.

And I trust him. And I'm happy to follow him. I'm happy to follow his lead. I'm happy to be shepherded by him.

I'm happy to hand my worries over to him. We have good days. We have bad days.

We have trials and tribulations and troubles. Yeah, we do. We do. But we have a really good shepherd.

He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I fear no evil because he is with me. He's rod and his staff that comforts me. He prepares a table for me in the midst of my enemies.

He anoints my head. My cup runs over. Like this, he is a good shepherd.

I'm going to dwell forever in his house. And I'm happy to follow him.

And I am, how shall we say this? I am not burdened by all of these virtue givers

Yeah, by all the law givers. I have one master. He's my authority. He tells me right from wrong. I got to follow him.

He's the king. He's got the authority. I'm not my own, you know, determiner by any means.

Like he's the king. But I can follow him and trust that he, if I'm ever concerned about anything, if I'm concerned about anything, if I do, if wickedness and evil start encroaching into my life and there is a concern and there's an issue that I can pray to him about it.

I can look at his word, get guidance and wisdom. I can ask for wisdom and help from my local body here at Sunnyside.

I can get some help and some direction. And then I can follow in obedience and entrust him with the results and do my very best.

And I can sleep really well at night. I mean, what you're saying is we don't have to, you know, in response to this question, or if you ever hear this episode, you ask us, where is your voice?

Well, we don't have to virtue signal because Christ is king. I mean, it really boils down to that.

Hey, so as you say, there's really evil people doing evil things. Well, we've been telling you about this all the time, right?

Yeah, we've been talking to you about how evil. Yeah, and Jesus has a scepter and he's smashing clay pots.

We've talked a lot about the God -given responsibilities, the order of affections.

Could you do the Latin term again? Ordo amoris. Ordo amoris.

Ordo amoris. Ordo amoris. Order of loves. Order of loves. Where do you find that in the scripture?

And I really should have a scriptural reference. What I have is the interview, I think, that J .D.

Vance did. And he talked about the order, different kinds of love and the order of affections. And the interviewer was just aghast.

I mean, just the jaw dropped. And it was so, not just backwards, it was revolutionary, what he was saying.

And she was so just floored that someone would actually talk like this. Where can we go in the scriptures to support that order of loves?

That got ordo. Good question. Ordo love. So, first of all, you start with Christ.

He talks about, first of all, deny yourself to follow him.

God before the self. You would think that the place you start was I would love me first, most of all, because if I don't take care of me, no one else will.

That's very post -modern American. Nonsense -y. Oh yeah.

Boy, everybody is there. It's like, I gotta take care of me, because no one else will. Jesus says, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.

And so, first of all, there's a reminder that God is the most important of all. And eating your family members, and even willing to part with family members over following Christ.

As he put that down as a possible line in the sand. You have in the story of creation that the problem came when

Adam and Eve sinned against God. That was the primary relationship. That's the primary thing. Now, we move from that and say, well, the first human relationship was husband and wife.

And when God made Eve and gave her to Adam, he said, for this reason, a man, listen to this, shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

What does this tell us right then and there is that husband and wife is more important than parent -child.

There's a priority there. And so, it's not that there's a patriarch who brings a wife in for his son, and then the wife and the son remain under his authority.

Right? That's not how that works. Exactly. They become their own family. Okay, so there's a priority of marriage over the children.

Okay, so there's a priority. So, in terms of relationships, I can say God, number one,

I gotta follow Christ, number one. Okay, and then there's my marriage. And then there are my children.

If I don't care for my household, I don't care for my children. If I don't raise them, then I'm worse than an unbeliever.

Right, that's what the scripture says. In regards to what does it mean to be a godly man in order to serve in the church, how do

I treat my wife? Like, what is my relationship with God? How do I treat my wife? And then how do I raise my kids?

And then, what's my reputation in the local community? Okay, we're deriving the order of Morris from these various exhortations and inscriptions and instructions in scripture.

We're given a lot of examples in who we're supposed to be loyal to, first, second, third, fourth, and so on.

At regarding your nation, regarding, which is your extended family, quote -unquote.

How did, at the language in Genesis 9 regarding the death penalty, who puts the murderer to death?

The brothers of the murdered. And who went to war to rescue

Lot? Abram. Abram went against the, and this was at a city -state level.

Okay, but Genesis 14 is a practical expression of Genesis 9. What did Abram do?

He went and got his brother, or his nephew, his relative. He went and got Lot and rescued him from those who had taken him captive.

So there was a, Abram, like, he has an obligation, right?

If Chedorlaer Mor and those kings had bypassed

Sodom and Gomorrah, Zebuim and Zohar and all the rest of them, and went past, and went down to something else, and then went,

Abram wouldn't have done anything. Why did he act? He had an obligation to, okay, so there's like -

Family, so it just keeps on expanding out, and there's a point in which, because of my priorities to God and to my wife and my children and my church, my neighborhood, my nation, so on,

I am filled up with doing good things. I have righteous priorities. You know what?

I'm a limited person. Exactly. It's like, I am busily doing the things that I know are good, and is there a possibility that I could take some of my money and get on a plane and fly somewhere into the heart of Africa and do some kind of good thing there?

You bet. You bet. I could probably do something good over there. We support foreign missionaries. Sure. I could probably go over there and do something personally.

I could help dig a well. I could get a shovel, and I could help dig, but do you know what I'm doing in saying yes to that?

You have to say no to other stuff. I'm saying no to a massive amount of other things, and that would not be right.

Now, I may have secured things in such a way that I have said yes. I've done all my due diligence, and this is part of what

God wants me to do, and my family's helping me in this, and it all aligns. Oh, great. Okay, I'll go dig that well.

Maybe it's my ministry. Maybe that's how I do my living, even, is helping other people get water to their villages.

Great. That's awesome. But any time, the order of salutas, what do we find in the scripture, is a whole host of scriptures that show us where the priorities are.

You bring it together and say, ah, you know what's more important to me as a pastor than this church?

Jesus Christ, my wife, my kids, more important than this church, and -

That hurts just a little, but that's okay. Well, just - Get over it, Dave. What happens if that gets inverted?

Yeah. I can't be pastor. Yeah, you're disqualified. I can't be pastor of this church. So, that's kind of where that comes from.

There are pastors who have done that who have lost their families because they put their ministry and their reputation and their success over that.

Sure, and it gets wrongly ordered. Yeah. I mean, this is not something that's new.

Ordo, I actually have to write it down, because I've never heard Ordo Amoris.

It makes sense, because I still remember a little high school Latin, but I always understood order of affections and the concentric circles.

This is a Western tradition. This has been around for - Since the garden?

Well, yes. But it's something that sounded so foreign when our current vice president said it, and everybody was just, was like, well, no, what are you talking about?

This is normal. This is, you know, Tom Sequinas wrote about this, and that's probably how

Vance knows about it. AOCS Lewis wrote about it. Augustine, I think, had some, at least one of the articles that I read,

Augustine had some beginnings of that. So it's, this is a Christian tradition. It's been buried since 1945.

That's why. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, post -war criticism doesn't make room for Ordo Amoris.

Yeah, but you don't have to have a screaming fit about terrible things that you're not responsible for. Right. Like, yeah, and you're not more, and you are not more virtuous for carrying that around.

You know, you just aren't. I reflect on my time in the military in this discussion.

For two, in two ways, there was a saying that was often said, all thrust and no vector, and no progress is made in such a way that's like a tumbling rocket, right?

How effective are we really whenever we're, this is going back to another part of my journey, going to house parties and seeing young guys following young girls from room to room.

And so when this one lady would go from this room to the next room, you know who else would accompany?

All her suitors. That's just exactly what's happening here. It's just, this is your lady you need to follow.

No, that's the lady that you need to follow. No, that's the lady. And it's just this constant thing where you're just moving from one place to the other, not making any progress with any ladies.

And you're just, instead of being drunk on alcohol, it's just blood lust. That's right. And envy.

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, sorry. I've been reflecting upon that this whole time and it just, you know, it's, you see things in nature sometimes that just remind you of just these, they're just like pictures that just condense so well.

Yeah, well, just remember the leech has two daughters. They're named Give and Give. Well, I think we can wrap up that discussion on those questions and we can move on to what we recommend this week,

Michael. The book called The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts? Essays on the

Use of the Old Testament in the New by G .K. Beale. He's the editor and there's a lot of different essays in here.

I like books full of essays. I feel like you can just read them in their chunk and move on. But there's a lot of really good articles in here from varying perspectives.

And so some people are going to be contending that yes, indeed, the church is getting the so -called right doctrine, but getting it from the wrong texts.

And then some people are saying, no, these texts really are saying these doctrines.

And then other people are saying it's the wrong doctrine and it's the wrong text. So it's one of those, it's not technically a debate book, but it's a compilation of many different essays regarding hermeneutics.

Okay. And those who are warm to the faith and vigorous in their hermeneutical applications have some pretty good essays in here.

And of course they have to deal with those who are objecting. And there are some who are trying to be faithful to the scriptures and insistent that you must read the

Old Testament like a Jew prior to resurrection. Otherwise you're not a good reader of the

Bible. That there's nothing there other than what was there at the time it was written, and that's it.

There's nothing else. And that's the way you read the Bible. And what about the light of Christ? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's just too messy. I'm just trying to take it literally. Yeah. You should do the same. Keep the veiled face on, please.

Oh, I will not. Yeah. So this was a book that was really helpful for me.

I mean, I got it dog -eared. No, sorry, Joel. Dog -eared and full of scratches everywhere. But it was helpful for me when

I was working out my hermeneutical method. So very, very helpful. Dave? A podcast that I have been enjoying recently is called the

Theology for the Church podcast. And you can just find it on Spotify, whatever.

It literally is called Theology for the Church. And I'm not recommending the podcast in general. I'm only recommending one section because he just pulls on people from everywhere and anything.

But from 3 November to 24 November, there were four episodes.

It was a four -part episode on Romans 11 to 26.

And in this way, all Israel shall be saved. And it gave you four different perspectives on it.

I believe, I think it was Josh, I think it was Josh May, who was talking to one of our elders,

Ryan, about this issue. And I just happened to be halfway through this series.

And the four perspectives that he gives it, when he says, in this way, all Israel shall be saved, to that verse in particular.

But to their credit, all four guys says, well, you need to back up and kind of take nine through 11 as a chunk.

So at least they did that. And I think at least two of them says, well, remember, this is actually in a flow from, there are eight chapters prior to this.

So don't take it in isolation. But in this way, all Israel shall be saved, that either means all spiritual

Israel, which includes Jews and Gentiles, the church, all elect

Israel, all ethnic Israel, all national Israel, meaning a restored nation.

So there's some progressive covenantalism thrown in there. There's some Sam Storms is a

Amil guy. And I think he's all the elect of Israel. It was interesting to hear the interplay of their perspectives.

Now, regardless of where you fall on this first, and I'm pretty sure I know where everybody at this table falls. But if you were investigating this and would like to hear some different perspectives,

Theology for the Church podcast on Romans 11 -26 will at least go over those four by academic guys.

I mean, really studied, learned guys. And if you're anything like me, halfway through some of the podcasts,

I'm yelling at the radio saying, that is a false dilemma, or that you just skipped right over that.

It says, oh, I know what you're going to say next. And what you could predict, I think is a lot of the arguments are well -worn and tired.

But I still, I enjoyed it. And if you're studying Romans and you're in Romans 9 -11, and hey, even if you come from maybe a more dispensational background and you want to hear some other perspectives, give it a try.

I enjoyed it. Was there any debate over the timing of the fulfillment of that verse, or was it just about defining who

Israel is? The timing aspect, I believe, only came in on the fourth guy, the really strong dispensational dude, who believes that this is talking about is a futurist eschatology and it's all national

Israel restored a nation. This is a great verse to support his restored

Israel nation in the future. The other perspectives at least referenced a possible ethnic, a mass conversion of Jews at the end.

So it was a little bit of eschatology in there, but for the most part, only the fourth view really talked about the timing while all the rest of the guys are talking about, yeah, this is just how

God is saving, how he has saved people in the past, saving people now, and will continue to save in the future.

So there's no preterist at the table for that particular event. You know,

I don't know. I will just say that I don't know which of those would actually, if a preterist would hold any of those views.

I mean, other than all Israel shall be saved, all spiritual

Israel, everybody who is in Christ would be all spiritual Israel. Okay.

Andrew? I recently read for the first time George Washington's farewell address.

And there's a big battle here in the United States about what it means to be

American. Just like the quote unquote church fathers, so you can just tug them towards your direction.

Going back to the founders is a favorite pastime for people looking to get them to affirm their narrative.

But just listening to what he had to say for his own purposes, his perspective on where the country had come from, and where it is at that point, and what he foresaw as something to fight for, and to be the binding principle for Americans into the future.

I grew up in the public education system, learning about what the founders really talked about was not really discussed.

See previous comment about trying to tug the founders towards a narrative. But it's been helpful to understand a little bit more about what our founding fathers in the

United States of America thought, what their actions were, and what they wanted for their people.

My recommendation for this week is yet another American historical figure.

Mine's a little bit longer than the farewell address, but it's the life of Andrew Jackson by Robert V.

Rimini. I might have actually recommended this before, but this is a condensed version of a two volume set.

I've got one side of the volume at the house, I gotta buy the second one when the cash flows are different.

But it is obviously a biographical work of Andrew Jackson, and this is the condensed version.

I really enjoyed it for the same reasons why Andrew probably enjoyed

George Washington's farewell address. But I'm gonna go ahead and tug Jackson all the way into my side, and just do what

I wanna do with him. But that man hated foreign influence. Hate, hate, hated foreign influence of all kinds.

And it was funny to watch throughout his life a view of himself that that was kind of his destiny in the country, was to be an expeller of foreign influence of all kinds.

Kicking out the British after he had already helped kick out the British as a 14 year old. He did it again in 1812.

He kicked out Indians who were working with the British and the Spaniards. He kicked out the bank with foreign influence.

And that's another recommendation is his veto, his bank veto in 1832. It's interesting because he lays out all the reasons why he gave the veto.

And he spends particular amount of time talking about the foreign investors there.

And you can tell there's a little bit more emotion in that language than there is, and all the rest of it.

But he was definitely somebody who saw plays being ran and tried to run plays against it.

I think that's actually very American to be aware of those things and to want them out.

It's kind of our neurosis, I think, that we have as a country and as a people from that time period that has just moved forward because we've always had, and I'm sure every country deals with this to a certain degree, but being a country with so much natural resources, such an advantageous defensive position on the globe to loot and take and raid what we have would be like the biggest prize for anybody trying to do it.

So I think defending that anybody who comes here and is settled the place, that becomes kind of their neurosis over time.

And it's a part of our people. And I think Andrew Jackson is like the earliest psychotic version of that.

And I'm Andrew's top guy. But I do recommend

The Life of Andrew Jackson, an abridged edition by Robert V. Rimini. What are we thankful for this week,

Michael? Well, I am thankful for my church, thankful for the way in which the

Lord has been faithful to lead us and provide for us and shape us.

Every once in a while, Beck and I begin to talk about things from the past and we're trying to piece it together and say, well, did that happen before so -and -so came here?

If we mentioned that to so -and -so, would they even remember that? Or how many kids did we have at the time?

Yeah, I don't know. That's how you mark time. And so just piecing together the providence of God in thankful reflection on the church.

So just very thankful for everything the Lord has done here. Thankful for the people here. Amen. Dave? I was invited to a high school level

TPUSA event. Some people like the organization, some people don't like the organization.

This particular group was more like a forensic society.

They were like public speaking and civil debate. Samuel Schwartz, a student there at actually my daughter's old school, he's also an aviation student and I've been going back and forth and I wrote him a letter of recommendation for a scholarship and he and I have just become friends and he's actually president of that chapter and wanted to know if I would mind coming by at some point.

He invited me and today was one of their last meetings of this semester before they start up. So I asked him,

I happened to be in town, asked him to say, hey, why don't I drop by? And I had to watch him lead and really control the room and throw out a topic for debate.

And then they divided it up into four groups and they had to kind of give an extemporaneous speech with very little preparation on the topic du jour.

Yeah, just whatever it is that he threw out. And then people were free to critique respectfully their views, which

I thought was really neat. I did debate in junior high.

I mean, I understand the formal debate, but the art of civil discourse, respectful disagreements, analyzing an argument, not attacking the person, attacking the argument and separating the two is something that many people cannot do.

They cannot function in that environment. And groups like this at the high school level,

I think are invaluable. So I am thankful for Sam for inviting me, for letting me participate.

It was just a neat time with some really sharp high school kids.

Amen, Andrew. I'm thankful that the semester is wrapping up and I'm thankful that next semester will be my last one and it'll be my greatest semester.

As the Lord wills, you know, that goes without saying. I'm very thankful to have been along for the ride on this university process.

I think the Lord, he's given me the opportunity to do it, take care of my family during this process.

I would never have thought that this would have happened, but praise the Lord for it. Amen. Well, I'm thankful for the order of loves that the

Lord has so perfectly laid out for us in his word and that there are principles there that we use and we can extrapolate and become wise with to apply to our daily lives because we have many responsibilities that he's given us and some of them are really hard and fast rules, which are great because I do well with those.

And then sometimes we need to use wisdom and budget time or resources in order to get things done for the people that we should love first and most, starting with our

Lord and Savior, Christ. And I'm thankful because if I didn't have the order, I'd be flying by the seat of my pants and I know how that goes.

So his order is best, he knows best. And like Michael was saying, him being the good shepherd, his guiding me in those areas is more special than I can even explain.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read.