Have You Not Read - S1:E4

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 saints.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham, David Kazin. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask for you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you. And today, I'm going to pass off the first question to Super Dave himself, and he can get us started.

I had an old acquaintance of mine, a work acquaintance, actually wrote me yesterday and actually addressed me by my call sign,

Super Dave, to let me know that he passed Air Force pilot training. Oh, wow.

That's awesome. He's going to be in the B -52. This is a kid that I mentored through a lot of years, and he has achieved something that a few people get to.

And he actually was a transfer from another career field, so he had to be even more competitive. Wow. So it's hard to stop someone that will not quit.

Good stuff. Amazing guy. Amazing guy, and I applaud him. So this is a question that came up today, and it is something that has rattled around in my mind, especially when, in my lifetime,

I have moved about every two to three years, and I have seen lots of different churches and lots of different pastors.

And depending on the flavor of the pastor, you kind of know what the congregation's going to be like.

Oftentimes, that's because they attract people that are like -minded. Other times, it's because of the strength of that personality.

People tend to change their theology. Like when people go to university, they haven't really changed their mind.

They just start talking like all their friends. In one case, in the case of eschatology, which is a hot -button issue in every single generation, we all think, wow, it's really hot -button now.

Well, you know, try reading a book, The Late Great Planet Earth.

You remember that book? You have single -handedly changed some of my thinking on the

Olivet Discourse. You have come from the more post -millennial and preterist views on much of what are prophetic passages.

In America today, in the United States, most people who are

Bible -believing Baptists—and I've spent many years in the

South. My favorite kind of people, by the way. Mine too. In the buckle of the Bible belt, when you say you go to a

Baptist church, that implies that you are more dispensational. Whether you are yourself or Jeff Durbin is another kind of celebrity pastor that attracts certain demographics.

How do you know when people are in your congregation, they're not just parroting what you're teaching them?

How do you know that, with the strength of your personality, that they're not just following the crowd again?

And if somebody else came in, well, they might start to go towards that view.

So for the futurist view, for the preterist view, I'm using that as a vehicle, as an example of when you have a really emotional issue, like eschatology, and you have people in your congregation—and

I'm one of them—who's adjusted their views under your teaching. You've caused me to investigate some of the things for myself, things that I wouldn't have considered before.

I've at least asked the question. Now I have come to some different conclusions, as you and I have talked about, but you've challenged me.

And in my case, I don't think that I'm just parroting what you have been saying.

But as I go from this church, and I'm in another church, or another church, depending on where I am in the country this month, how do

I know that the people are convicted because of the Scripture, and they're following their conscience, or it's the pastor's words coming out of their mouth, and they're just trying to fit in?

How can I use the Scriptures to help me test that? Or how can I use the Scriptures to test myself, to know that I am following core

Scripture, and then with a little bit of room, conscience, or I'm just trying to make my pastor happy?

Yeah, that's a good question. There is a lot packed in there, and I think that we could talk about the proper relationship, biblically speaking, what is the biblical model that should be present between the saints and their elders in a local church?

What is the relationship between the students and the teacher in a discipleship type of arrangement?

What is the appropriate kind of relationship there, and the fruit of that?

As Jesus says, it is enough for a student to be like his teacher, or a disciple to be like his rabbi.

There's going to be, naturally, some mimicry of speech, some using of phrases.

There's going to be some of that that just naturally happens, because that's the way that God made us.

He made us to learn by imitation. So some of this is just caught up in the design of what it means to be made in the image of God.

As we look at God, as He reveals Himself to us, and then we imitate what we see, we imitate how

He reveals Himself, and this is what we commonly call godliness. Well, this happens within the church, but the pastor is not the final authority.

The pastor is not Christ. He is just an under -shepherd, just a servant of Christ to help feed

Christ's sheep, protect Christ's sheep, pray for Christ's sheep. And what is he going to be feeding the sheep who belong to Jesus and who love

Christ, purchased by His blood? The elder is going to be feeding them the

Word of God. As Paul addresses the elders of Ephesus in Acts chapter 20, he sets himself before them as their example.

Here's what I did. I preached to you the whole counsel of the Word of God. I fed you with the

Word of God. I defended you against the false teachers. You do the same for your flock in Ephesus.

You feed them the Word of God, and you defend them against false teachers. And wolves will rise and go after the sheep, even men from among you, he says.

So clearly, even among a group of elders, one may arise who is a false teacher and who will prey upon the flock.

This is something that we have to be ready for and aware of. This is why you need a plurality of elders in a church, not just one dude, not just one pastor.

So there is also the biblical wisdom packed into that model. Nonetheless, there is still a great temptation for people to attach themselves to some personality, to kind of shut off the thinking part of their brain and just receive, kind of like turning on the television and just receiving and not really filtering, thinking, wrestling with, you know, and so on.

That's not what we're called to do anywhere in the Scripture when it comes to the teaching and the preaching that we sit under.

We should be like the wise Bereans in Acts 17 who listened to, you know, the splendid preaching and teaching of Paul as he was, you know, copiously bringing together all these passages from the

Scriptures, demonstrating with great skill that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. And they're like, okay, we're going to go search the

Scriptures to see if these things are so. Right? And were they greatly helped by Paul? Were they appreciative of Paul?

Did they give honor where honor was due and all those things? Well, sure, but Paul, you see, they understood had to be in submission to the

Word of God. So any pastor, any elder who is teaching and preaching and, you know, if there's a focus on eschatology or if there's a focus on soteriology or whatever, that pastor and elder needs to be compelling, upbraiding the people.

You need to be searching the Scriptures. At the very least, he needs to be saying, look here in the text.

Look here in the text. What does the text say? You need to pay attention, stare with me at this text.

And then to make sure that we have this, let's look at the text before and after, and let's go look at some other passages, because the things that we're saying here need to be fully supported by God's Word.

I want you to be convinced from the Word of God about what this means. So, any pastor who does that, he's doing his job, like John MacArthur's doing his job.

Okay, let's look at another passage, let's look at another passage, let's look at another passage. He's doing his job. And that doesn't prevent people from attaching themselves to a popular preacher and just kind of hitching their ride to his and saying, oh yeah, whatever he says, that's what

I believe. Well, if the pastor's doing his job saying, you need to believe it because it's in the

Word of God, because then it's from Scripture, and they're not heeding that, then they're responsible for that.

And they just need to be paying closer attention to what their good pastor is telling them to do. It shouldn't be personality -driven.

Churches should not be personality -driven organizations, PDOs, as we call them.

The churches should not be that. Sometimes they become that. Sometimes it's some people become, be a part of a church because they're attaching themselves to a personality.

Now the temptation, of course, is if the pastor or the leader, the teacher, whoever it is, if they in the flesh are gratified by that and promote that kind of ride on that and so on, well, that's inappropriate and that's sinful.

But I think the temptation, of course, is there. The potential is there for pastors and teachers to basically say,

I'm your spiritual guru. I'll tell you how to think and what to believe. You just trust me. And that's wrong.

And then the temptation is also wrong on the other side of followers who just want that brand.

They want to belong to that brand. They want to claim that name, just like in 1 Corinthians.

In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul says there's contentions going on there.

In verse 12, he says, Now I say this that each of you says, I am of Paul or I am of Apollos or I am of Cephas or I am of Christ.

Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? And he just says, look, you're totally missing it here.

Preachers or pastors, apostles, evangelists, whoever they are, they're all servants of Christ.

We're supposed to be united in him. So I think the first answer to your question is simply that the pastor should be doing due diligence and saying, look at the text, read the text, read it for yourself.

By the way, here's two other passages we don't have time to get into. But go read them for yourself. Here's some homework for a

Sunday afternoon or for this week or so on. I want you to be in the word, in the word, in the word, in the word. A pastor who's doing that is doing his job at some level.

Now if somebody does get in the word and they do go check it out and they come back and they say,

I think you totally missed something here. Then that pastor, if he really meant what he said, then he's going to be like, man,

I appreciate you studying, getting into the word. You've obviously been learning a lot. That is great.

I love to talk to you about this. Let's do that. Okay. Those are litmus tests, right?

Is the pastor going to submit himself to the word? And can he, can a pastor get a challenge, a true

Christian spirited challenge or question from a non -pastor, a saint, just a congregant and say, yeah, let's go.

Let's talk about this. This is great. This is what we want to do. Okay. So that's a litmus test. Because the other side of that is if you have somebody who's like, nobody can question me,

I'm God's man. This is the word of the Lord. And if you're questioning me about that, you don't know how to handle the text.

You didn't go study Greek and Hebrew as long as I did. You know, you don't have any, you don't have the capacity to understand things the way

I do. That's, okay, no, that's exactly the wrong kind of approach.

I'll give you a specific example. A few years back, it was at 2017, it was the 500 year anniversary of the

Reformation, Desiring God puts out these posts that says, you are not saved by faith alone.

Be killing your sin. Well, well, that's going to blow up the evangelical internet, you know, and then so this causes a big ruckus.

And then Piper comes out on, you know, October 31, 2017, and writes an article that he says that when it comes to the five solas, the alones, like faith alone, fine for using for initial conversion, but we shouldn't be using it about final salvation.

And then, like, when I read that, I'm like, I'm confused, I'm all over the place, like what in the world?

So I went into a deep dive, and I read and researched all these different things, what's going on here?

And there's, I found all sorts of interesting information. Now, to leave everything on a cliffhanger,

I'm going to talk about something partially related. There was a homeschooling mom who did a deep dive into all of Piper's works, and showed that how sometimes, in certain years, he was very much, you know, you're ultimately in the final estimate, you're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

Just straight up, okay? And other times, he was writing things like, you know, your works are not meritorious, but they help you obtain your salvation.

I have no idea how that works, and I don't know if anybody does. They obtain your salvation, but they're not meritorious.

Well, now I'm thoroughly confused, and everybody should be who reads that. So she does this deep dive, and she has like 35 footnotes, and she's showing patterns and so on, and she's got scriptures, she's bringing in the

Heidelberg Catechism, and she's doing all this kind of stuff, and I'm like, wow, this lady is putting, you know, some time and effort into this.

And so she publishes these articles, and then people begin to respond to it, and this one guy responds, and she has been referencing some historical controversies concerning the

Westminster Confession, and so on and so forth, and he comes back and says, you can't understand

Wistias unless you read him in the original Latin. Have you read him in the original Latin?

And he literally said this, he wrote in response, he said, have you been peer -reviewed, published in theological journals?

And he just totally, you know, demeans, you're a homeschooling mom.

You don't have any business critiquing Piper, right? What just happened there?

Well, I would say that's a cult personality, and I don't even think that, like, if John Piper read what he said to the homeschooling mom, he would probably be embarrassed, and probably be like, dude, what are you doing, you know?

So that was a person that was supporting Piper, like a

Piperite, or, you know. And then basically saying, because she's a homeschooling mom, and she can't read

Wistias in the original Latin, and she isn't peer -reviewed, published, then she's got no business questioning the big dogs, okay?

That kind of approach was... That's a guy who doesn't really understand homeschool moms, because they're a lot stronger than that.

I'm married to one. They're not weak. Well, I agree with you about the strength aspect, but he's saying you're not qualified, okay?

And this, on the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, where the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, and the

Sola Scriptura, and the whole protestant occurred because of this magisterium who says, we get to say what everyone should believe, and nobody can question us.

I mean, to me, it was thoroughly ironic, okay? This is a lesson where it's like, all right, well, if you have somebody who's a teacher personality, big personality,

I mean, okay, well, maybe God gave him a big personality. That's okay, great, maybe you can use that for God's glory, wonderful.

And he loves the scripture, and he wants to help a lot of people, that's great. But if he's wrong on something, and he just can't be bothered for anybody lesser than him to correct him, then that's a problem.

That's a problem. And I guess the litmus test is, how does he handle the word of God? How does he handle the word of God?

Is he doing due diligence? Is he rightly studied to show himself approved? Is he just coasting, especially the guys who get older in the later parts of their careers, they just kind of coast, and they coast on their name and their fame, and they don't really study the word anymore, and they just, you know, they kind of go into telling stories and so on and so forth.

And we all know this to be true and that kind of thing, rather than getting into the word and showing I'm submitted to Christ, I'm submitted to Christ, I'm submitted to Christ.

All right, so if you were dealing with, whether you're in a more, let's say, a more liberal church, very strong personality, people are saying the things that they're hearing from the pulpit and parroting that.

Or you're in a conservative biblical church, and people are saying those things that they're hearing from the pastor.

The response is the same. The pastor, whether they're testing themselves, it's with the word.

Whether you are in that congregation observing, you have to say, okay, let's see if what

I'm being told is true. And if you are one of those people in the congregation, then you have to be, okay, am

I just parroting what I've heard? There is some imitation, especially in the early days, that's part of learning.

But my response to you as my pastor must also be the same.

And it's, you know, go to the word. And it's a great litmus test for if you're in that position of authority, whether you are pastor, elder, deacon, what is your response when someone like me says,

I don't understand this. And, you know, as long as it's asked in the right spirit, of course.

Yeah. And it might be someone who's like, well, I don't understand it either. I mean, it's like, this is a question that I have too.

And here's where I'm trying to answer. Here's how I'm trying to answer it. Like as a pastor, it doesn't mean that I have like all the answers on the

Bible I answer, man. I want to have reflected enough upon the scriptures that I'm able to give an answer.

But sometimes that answer is going to be, I haven't thoroughly figured this out yet, but here's the direction

I'm heading. Here are the passages I'm reading and studying and thinking about, meditating on how they connect.

And the happy thing is, is when we know that the different passages in the

Bible are in harmonious conversation with each other, we know there's an answer and we can trust that.

But again, we're still children and we have a Heavenly Father who's providing for us, but we're still children.

And there are things that it's going to take us a while to answer sometimes, and it's okay that we can grow up and take some time in answering some things.

The problem is if, you know, the other side of it is a hermeneutic of suspicion where we say that the different passages in the

Bible are in a kind of conversation, but they're in tension. Watch this.

If you hear someone, if you hear like a pastor, teacher, scholar, or so on, and they begin talking about different passages in the

Bible being in tension together, and I think they probably say it with a lisp, but that they're in tension with one another, what they mean is that they're in disagreement with each other.

And they are operating at some level with a hermeneutic of suspicion.

Now, I don't think any passage in the Bible is in tension with any other part of the Bible. I think they're in harmony.

They play different notes, but they're in harmony, and they are all harmonized together in Christ, and he's the answer.

He's the answer. And, yeah, so there's some stuff I don't have, I don't really know the answer to.

There's some stuff that I feel pretty strong on that it'd probably end up turning out that I'm, you know, off, okay?

You know, I believe that I'm totally right on what I believe, but I also believe that I could be wrong, okay?

But I'm totally convinced that I'm right with the things that I do believe, okay? But that's the conviction level of this sincerity before God.

This is the best I can say, best I can tell, this is what it says. And it's not about a system of eschatology or a system of soteriology.

I'm not committed to those. I want to be committed to Christ, and I think all genuine believers, hey, we all agree about that.

That's not unique to me. That's evidence of the

Holy Spirit being at work in us, and whether somebody is a dispensationalist or somebody is not, we can talk about these things.

If they're my brother in Christ, I know that they want to treasure Christ above all things, so do

I. And they believe the promises of the scripture are true, and so do I. And they don't think there's any errors in the Bible, and neither do

I. And so there's all sorts of agreement there. Taking a crack at, you asked, as a part of the question, how does he know whether they're parodying him or not?

Or actually being in the Word. Or actually being in the Word. I think you can, I'm taking a different angle on this, but you can identify grammar school logic from dialectic and rhetoric capabilities, where a child is in the stage where he repeats things consistently.

He or she repeats things consistently that they're being taught. And then when they're starting to play with the logic of it all and how it makes sense and how it's being put together, the way that they speak and the way that they interact with people about these subjects, whether they're just giving the party line, grammar school logic, or whether they're actually entertaining the idea of the opposition and trying to reasonably engage with it,

I found that being a problem with myself as a baby

Christian, toting the party line and coming across how humans learn things in a way of kind of the grammar school logic leading into the dialectic and then rhetoric, was very helpful for me, knowing that I should keep my mouth shut until I get to the rhetoric part.

So, and sometimes you have to have practice to get to the rhetoric part. But I think for pastors and elders, one of the best ways they can gauge where a believer's at is where they fall in their capabilities or their gifting in, or how they're applying their gifting and being able to argue for one view of the text versus another.

So maybe that's one way he can know, or others can know, and knowing themselves whether they should engage or not, where they're at on that kind of line.

And it doesn't have to be, you don't have to take that as like the rule, because there's always exceptions to that, but that's a way to gauge at least.

I think that's a good point. What's encouraging to me is when somebody is trying to engage with whatever the lesson was or the sermon was from that text, and they bring up a passage of scripture that I didn't mention, didn't talk about, didn't even allude to, and they bring it up like, this reminds me of this over here, right?

And they're working it out. And they may even disagree with me on the particulars of Preterism or Post Mill, whatever.

Are they bringing the Word of God to bear upon the preaching and the teaching of the

Word of God? Are they seeing how it fits together? Are they thinking about the context of the passage that was dealt with?

Are they thinking about how the truths of God that they have been learning throughout their years or months or days as a

Christian, how they're trying to see how that fits together? That's where you see someone thinking, meditating upon the

Word of God, trying to appropriate it and feed on it and be nourished, chewing on it for themselves.

There is a great danger in people just, okay, they said that, so this is what

I'll say. There's a great danger in that. And it usually shows up by people eventually leaving the fellowship of the church and never coming back.

Usually that's where it ends up, because their whole Christian faith has been one of parroting, and they never really own it for themselves.

And occasions happen, things happen, and then they're not in church, and they don't come back for a little while, and then they realize that there wasn't ever anything there anyway.

You know, Jesus used COVID to clean out his temple with a lot of money changers and a lot of deadbeats.

And in defense of parrots, there's going to be a lot of them in our day and age, because they were educated the same way that I was.

They were educated to be parrots. They were discipled to be parrots. And in a sense, your short time, and I really do think it should be a short time that you're a parrot, you should enjoy repeating good truths of God that you're getting from your pastors, whether they're pre -mill or post -mill, it doesn't matter, the eschatology.

The parroting part is a natural step into getting into that maturity that you're trying to work towards as a baby

Christian. But you should grow up as something. Oh, absolutely, yeah. You don't stay a parrot forever. Yeah, and the milk of the word is nourishing and desirable, but then there's the growing up, as we hear in Hebrews, beyond that.

Well, we'll move on to one of our other questions that we have, also from David, but I'll go ahead and ask this one.

I'll give him a break. What is the law of Christ? I thought we were not under law, but under grace.

Okay, so David, the law of Christ, what passage comes to your mind when you ask that?

I wish you hadn't asked me, because I cannot remember the reference, and I'm the one that wrote the question.

Well, I know there's a passage in Galatians. Is it in Galatians? Yes. Okay. I know there's a passage in Galatians, so in Galatians 6, in 6 verse 2, it says,

Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Yes, yeah. I have a family, but the impetus of this question is some family members, but I'd use that phrase and say, well, you know, looking at some of the

Old Testament Levitical laws to gauge actions, to look at some of our law in the

United States and saying, well, is this right? Is this wrong? You know, is this moral?

Is this immoral? Well, let's look at the law of God, and let's see what kind of principles we can draw out of that.

And one of the responses was, no, we're not under law. We're under grace.

And then it says, well, you know, it's the law of Christ. You know, there's some things that Jesus said, you know, love your neighbors and all these things, but we're not under law.

We're under grace. And that is the parrot. That is exactly what that is.

They are saying the parrot. They are parroting. They are parroting. That is somebody they're just repeating it over and over, and it usually comes from a particular hermeneutic that separates the

Old Testament and the New Testament. But when I wrote that, I'm trying to remember if what

I heard was, you know, we're under the law of Christ. We're not, you know.

Not the Old Testament law. Yeah. So it's two different laws. Is that what they're trying to differentiate between the law of God and the law of Christ?

Or the law for Israel and the law for the church? Yes. So because of the, again, dispensationalism is about a hermeneutic.

And again, everything is about hermeneutic, really. How are you going to interpret the scriptures?

There's going to be a lens that you're going to use to interpret the scriptures. And it's all fine and good. And I think that we all agree with the principle that the scripture interprets the scripture.

And I would say that, you know, all kinds of people from all sorts of positions would be in agreement with that.

It's not unique. I would say that to avoid a tautology, we should put it like this, that scripture interprets scripture according to Christ.

The scribes and Pharisees knew a lot about the Bible. I mean, they knew a lot about the Torah, the Kethuvim, the Nevi 'im.

I mean, they love the Tanakh. They love the scriptures. And they spend a lot of time with it. And they would certainly be interpreting the law of Moses according to, you know, the writings of the

Proverbs and the writings of the prophets and so on. So they were interpreting scripture with scripture. But Jesus, nonetheless, had to say things to them like, have you never read?

Have you not read? And to tell them that you search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, that it is these that testify of me.

In his parable about Lazarus, who ends up with a rich man and Lazarus, the leper, you know, in Hades, and the leper goes to this favorite position in heaven.

You have the description of this man in hell or in Hades, you know, calling out and saying, hey, you know, could you send

Lazarus, this poor leper, back from the dead and go warn my brothers?

And Jesus is like, they're not going to—they've got Moses. If they don't believe Moses, then they're not going to believe someone coming back from the dead.

Right? So the point is, you know, it's not just about scripture interpreting scripture.

It has to be according to Christ for it to make sense. Okay? Because without the person and work of Christ in his full glory being the lens through which we interpret the scriptures,

I mean, you have all kinds of cults and false teachers and so on claiming to do the very same thing.

And you can see the mechanisms that they use at work. Look, I'm comparing scripture with scripture, comparing scripture with scripture.

That in and of itself is not adequate. It has to be interpreted through Christ. Why do we know that? Because Jesus himself told us that.

If you don't interpret the Bible according to me, you're going to miss it. And he said that again and again and again.

So when it comes to this question about the law of Christ, the real question is coming down to not even so much about the passage itself, but about systems of how we understand the law, the old covenant and the new covenant.

Okay? Now, this is a big question, big question. So for someone who is of a dispositional mindset, the main thing is, is that God keeps his promises.

That's the main thing for dispensationalists. God keeps his promises. Yeah. And I am total agreement with my brothers on that.

Absolutely. God keeps his promises. It was C .I. Schofield himself who said that this is an eternal covenant, and God keeps his promises.

He must fulfill these promises that he made, Old Testament Israel. Now, he decided how that was going to be done, but the principle is still the same.

Right. And he took clear aim, and I think the dispensationalists took clear aim at the liberal theology emerging out of the continent, the

Tubagin School and so on, that was infecting everything, the churches and the academy and so on, about trying to say that there's errors in the scripture or, you know, you don't need the history of the

Bible to believe in the mythical value of the Bible. You don't need the actual history to be history to be benefited by all the myths in the

Bible. And so the dispensationalists took straight aim at those liberals and said, no, the word of God is true, it's without error, it is perfect, and God keeps his promises, this is the real deal, real history, and God will fulfill his promises in real history.

And they took aim, and they fired, and they launched the baby along with all their bullets. Okay. And it's my perspective on the matter.

So the thing about it is, yes, God keeps his promises, but who gets to tell us how he does it?

Jesus does. And the way in which Jesus and his apostles say that the old covenant promises get fulfilled is not the way that dispensationalists say they get fulfilled.

And I understand the quandary, but part of this is about, are you going to read the New Testament in tension with the old?

Are you going to read the New Testament as a parenthesis, as an aside?

As something that doesn't have a lot to do with the old? Because the old has to be fulfilled according to, or the

New Testament itself continually interprets the Old Testament. It says, here's how you got to think about this, here's how you got to think about this, here's how.

In fact, the latter prophets interpret the former prophets in the

Old Testament itself. And what the New Testament does when it takes up Old Testament promises and says, here's how they're fulfilled in Christ, that was already modeled by the latter prophets who took up those promises in facing exile, in exile, post -exile, take up the promises of God, the covenants of God, the patterns and systems of shadows.

How do you think they're operating as the people of God as they have returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple?

And it ain't that impressive in the priesthood, the lineage of the priesthood is pretty murky and, oh, by the way, we don't have an

Ark of the Covenant, so how are we going to cast the blood upon the mercy seat when the Day of Atonement comes on? And we have got ourselves a problem, folks.

How are they thinking about this? What are they thinking? They're thinking very clearly more and more and more.

They're saying, you know what? This ain't it. This ain't it. God promises a new covenant and He said all these wonderful things are going to happen.

Well, we're not there yet, folks. And the way that they begin to take up the Old Covenant promises and talk about them become more and more clearly that there's someone coming who's going to fulfill the whole thing, that all the promises of the

Old Covenant are like patches sewn together in one mantle, and that mantle is going to be laid upon the shoulders of the servant

Messiah. And that's what happened. And so it looks different than what the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees had anticipated, but nonetheless, it was the real genuine fulfillment.

In fact, it was bigger and better than any of them had ever hoped for. But that's the way God works. So I'm talking about things from my perspective, but in terms of the law of Christ, in terms of the

Old Covenant, the New Covenant, and so on. Now, Old Covenant, Old Covenant law, how did it function?

You know, how did it function? Show the holiness of God, the character of God.

It was given to them time and again in terms of, I am the Lord, your God, who brought you up out of Egypt.

Do this, do that. Okay. I am the Lord, your God. Here is... So it's all about the character and the holiness of God being expressed in his law.

And here's how you... Now, why did he want Israel to live in these ways? Israel is very clearly selected as the mediator of the

Old Covenant. Kingdom of priests. Right. It's a kingdom of priests. How would the nations know the one true

God? They were to look to Israel. Very clearly, they looked to Israel. And God, when he approved the building of the temple, talked about the nations looking to the temple as a house of prayer for all nations, he described

Israel in terms of the nations were to see Israel and eventually they would be coming to Israel to learn about who

God is, that there would be... And he made provision for them to enter in.

But Israel was a mediator, a shadow mediator, because the substance is

Christ. So everything going on in Israel is all about them serving as this caretaker mediator of the

Old Covenant, wherein God is working into the concrete of history, the patterns and the forms needed for the coming of the gospel, for the proclamation of the gospel.

So in the Old Covenant, you can have all kinds of people in Israel who are part of the covenant who are not circumcised of heart.

They are not born again. They are not spiritually alive. They're spiritually dead.

But they are still part of the Old Covenant. And there is a group in the Old Covenant who were spiritually alive, whose hearts were circumcised, true worshipers of God.

And they were often referred to as the remnant, the faithful remnant.

OK, they are often kind of talked about in these terms. But Israel was supposed to obey all these commandments of God and follow the law of God, including the laws about what you do when you messed up, sacrificial system, the whole thing.

And if they broke that covenant, then God was going to bring judgment upon them. So how did they do?

They did very poorly over time. There were some bright spots. Every single time you have a really bright spot in the

Old Covenant, you have typology of Christ in crystal clear form. Every time there's a high point in the

Old Covenant, the typology of Christ is just pristine. Joshua or David.

Yeah. Joshua or David, or even when you see the consolidation of things in Samuel, who is a judge and a priest and a prophet, and David acting as king and prophet and in priestly ways, these high points of Old Covenant moments, you see the typology of Christ.

Well, the law, as Paul says, is good for those who use it lawfully.

OK, and it's a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. Now, this is sometimes used in a reductionistic way.

And I'm not saying it's bad, but if you watch Living Water's Way of the Master and so on, it says,

OK, the law and this is reduced to the moral law in Living Water's and the

Way of the Master. The law is supposed to make you see how sinful you are, which it does.

It's like Donald Gray Barnhouse's illustration of the mirror on the wall shows you how dirty your face is.

I always add, you don't then take the mirror off the wall and scrub your face with it. You know, that's not the point of it. But it's supposed to lead you to Christ because you realize you need a savior.

It's actually more thorough than that. The law is a schoolmaster which leads us to Christ in every sense, not just the moral.

And I don't really agree with the separation of moral, civil and ceremonial.

I don't really agree with that. That's a whole other question. Well, it's related. It's related.

But the law is a schoolmaster leading us to Christ. It was a teaching tool.

It was God leading Israel and the Gentiles, the nations toward Messiah and in every possible way, the sacrificial system, the civil system, whatever you want, all of it.

Even the mixing of garment? Yeah. Yeah. And the trimming of the edge of your beard and so on and so forth.

All of it was about a shadow which leading to the substance, which is

Christ. Now, does this mean now that Christ has come and the old covenant has passed away and the new covenant has come that we are no longer obligated in any of the moral impetuses that we see in the old covenant?

Well, the law has done its job and brought us to Christ. We are not a theocracy and we don't have the, unless we all want to move to Israel and then have the ancient boundaries, but we're not supposed to do that unless that's what you're saying, that we should move to the holy land of Israel, be that kingdom of priests so we can live under the

Old Testament law because Jesus is our King. Right.

So what happens in the New Testament as Jesus says the new covenant, which is in this cup and my blood is the new covenant shed for many for the remission of their sins.

As Jesus inaugurates the new covenant, gets it started through his death and resurrection and sends the promise of the new covenant, which is the

Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost in the new covenant. As we begin to discover what this means, the language of the old covenant is brought forward and seen in the full bright daylight of Christ.

We discover according, for instance, out of Galatians 4 and Hebrews 12, we are on Mount Zion now.

We are part of heavenly Jerusalem now. The saints have been gathered together in these places that had real genuine historical geographical notations.

They existed. They were absolutely real. But the shadows are no longer needed.

The new has come. So this is not to say that the old covenant was pointless, useless, not for us, throw it all away, has nothing to do with us whatsoever, because all of it has to do with Christ.

And that's who we're following. That's who we're following. So let me put it this way.

In the old covenant, were you breaking covenant if you murdered somebody? Yes. Yeah.

Yes, you were. Yeah, absolutely. In the old covenant, were you breaking covenant if you tried to worship

God in an unholy way? Yes. Yeah. In the old covenant, were you breaking covenant if you didn't circumcise your kids?

Yeah. Yes, absolutely. There's all sorts of ways to break covenant in the old covenant, but Israel ultimately turned out to be an unfaithful mediator, failed.

That servant failed, just like Adam failed, just like Noah ultimately failed,

Israel failed. All these different servants of God failed, but there's one servant who doesn't fail, and that's

Christ. And in the new covenant, he's the mediator.

Does he ever break covenant? Never. Does he ever fail? No. No, he never breaks covenant.

He never fails. And so he unceasingly, unerringly leads us in all the covenant faithful ways.

The more Christ -like we are, the more agreement we are with him, the more in resonance we are to the character of God, his godliness, who he is, is seen in us, the fruit of the spirit, so on and so forth.

And this manifests like not murdering, yeah, and not even hating, and this manifests as like not stealing and, oh, yeah, not even lusting and coveting the things that don't belong to you and being idolatrous in your greed.

And this manifests as the kind of holiness and thanksgiving of heart and the praise of our lips.

And you know what? We don't need the sacrificial system anymore because Christ is our sacrifice. And what about authority structures and so on, and so theocracy?

Well, you know what? Jesus Christ is king of kings and lord of lords, and he's reigning from the right hand of God, and all his enemies are going to be made of footstool for his feet, and the last enemy is going to be death.

And so he is ruling and reigning right now. And notice that there's a difference between the kingdom in the old covenant, which was shadow, and the kingdom in the new covenant, which had been made fully manifest as a mountain, which fills the entirety of the earth.

And into this mountain, Isaiah says, the nations come, right?

The nations come into this mountain, and when they get there, they lay down, they reforge their swords and their weapons into plowshares.

It is in Christ that people, tribes, and nations who have been at war with each other for generations, come together, and they cease to be at war, and they come together at the table of Christ, and their weapons are laid down, change into harvest implements, and then we go out as laborers in his harvest together, arm in arm, at peace with him, and his kingdom spreads and spreads and spreads until the knowledge of the glory of God covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.

That's the vision that we have. So when we say we're not under law, we're under grace, yes, we are no longer, we have no more need to be committed to and submitted to shadows.

The substance has come. But does this mean that Christ doesn't have any commands for us to follow, any call upon our life to do things?

Oh, there's a lot that he wants us to do. He's the master. We're the slaves. He's the king.

We're his subjects. And he's got lots of stuff for us to do. And although we're not required to, you know, better not wear a polyester cotton shirt because it mixes different fibers, the shadows are done, but the substance has come, and the substance is so much more clear and more intense and so on.

And so let's make sure that we better not mix James Cone with the preaching of the gospel.

Isn't that a little bit more important, right, than mixing together? Let's make sure that we're not, you know, half gnostic in our preaching of the gospel.

Let's make sure that we're not mixing the unholy and the holy together and calling it good, right? There's all sorts of principles that apply to those who are following Christ that he wants from us.

And so, yeah, we're not under the law, meaning we're not conducting our life according to shadow anymore.

Praise be to God. We're conducting our life according to—we're in the new covenant.

New things have come. The old has passed away. That former age has gone. The new age has come. We're in the new covenant following Christ.

And the coastlines have been waiting for his law. Yes. And, yeah, and we notice what happened, just like Zechariah said, 10 men grabbed the sleeve of a

Jew and said, take us with you. And the gospel came to the Jew first, then also to the Gentile. And, you know, Paul was one of those

Jews that more than 10 men grabbed his sleeve and said, take us with you into the kingdom because we want to serve this

Christ and we want to worship him. And these are all good and glorious things that we see.

I think people really don't know what to do with Old Testament sometimes. But if we remember that this is shadow and Christ is substance, that Israel was a shadow mediator.

And so Israel was doing things that—like, for instance, Israel went in and just, like, wiped out all these

Canaanites as the judgment of God. Israel was the hammer of the justice of God to take out all these

Canaanites with whom God had been patient for 10 generations. Well, you know, people say, well,

I don't know what to do with that. Am I supposed to hate pagans and hate—and, you know, we're not under a theocracy, so we get rid of that.

But wait a second. You know, Jesus is the fulfillment of that. I was shadow. He's the substance.

And he judges and he reigns and he conquers and he will. So, you know, it's completely his right as the mediator to do that.

To bring forth the sword of the Lord against all the enemies of God. So I think that sometimes we get—you know, the challenge with dispensationalism or even covenant theology is this maneuver we make from the experience of Israel and the life of the

Church. And if we don't properly have the trajectory through Christ, we either make the dispensational move of absolute separation or we make the covenant theology move of flattening everything.

And we're not seeing things from the proper angle. Have you guys heard a decent explanation?

I know this is tangential, but have you guys heard a decent explanation as to why they were not allowed to mix fibers?

Or is that a question that you have the I don't know answer to? Well, I don't remember any explanations

I've been given for it, other than it's in a series of instructions about holiness where very often the explanation that I've heard that has been given about the holiness code in Leviticus or wherever is this is to say you're not supposed to be like the other nations around you.

Right. So one of the explanations I've heard is actually that the mixing of garments is actually or fibers is actually a priestly thing.

So it's not it's not set aside as something that's unholy, but something that is holy because the garments of the priest had to be mixed fiber in order to have the correct dyes to be to be.

What was it? Blue, purple, scarlet. And to have the braid as it was in gold, it had to be different fibers.

So it was set aside, actually, as something that was holy, that a priest was supposed to wear and not necessarily a common

Israelite. Oh, that's interesting to me. Yeah, I hadn't heard it before, but I heard it a few days ago on obviously another podcast.

Yeah, exactly. A lot of those laws definitely had some practical aspects to it.

Everything from circumcision was a very much a benefit health wise for some of the ancient cultures.

But that wasn't its primary purpose. You know, I don't want you eating shellfish because you could possibly get sick.

There was a I don't want you to be like the nations around you. That's always the primary primary reason.

But if I could summarize, Pastor Michael, you're following Christ. In Christ, you are his and in him that keeps covenant.

You are under grace, but you're also following the law, just not the shadow of the law.

You're following the substance of the law. You're following the talos of the law. Jesus Christ is the talos or the end of the law, the fulfillment of the law for all who believe unto righteousness.

So when we believe in Christ, who is the fulfillment of the law, his righteousness covers us.

It is righteous. It's not my own, Paul says, an alien righteousness that covers me. It's not mine.

It's his that makes me right and just before the eyes of God. And it is the grace of God brought about in the new covenant where I have a desire and an ability to follow

Christ and to do these things and to live these ways that are the best ways.

When you think about the society that God constructed for Israel, he constructed a whole society for Israel and then just gave it to them and said, do these things.

What was he doing? Was he making really hard things? Was he like giving them like like punishments for being

Israelites? So, you know, as you just like you live in an old time and you're a bunch of Israelites, so we're gonna make things really terrible and bad for you.

He gave them the best model of society that has ever been witnessed or recorded like he gave them the very best of the best society.

When he talks about what city elders do and how cities function and how how the tribes were supposed to relate to one another, he gave them the absolute best in that time.

There was there was nothing better than what God gave to them from the laws that they were to follow and so on and so forth.

This is like in the feast that they got to celebrate and so on and so forth. This was for their joy and their good and their delight for their bounty.

He was giving to them the best possible world of Eden while the world was still fallen.

And how did they do? Yeah, they said, they said, you know, they said, your bounty is our burden.

Right. Just like our kids do. Right, right. Like, I'm like, we like your mother and I were constructing the very best world for you that we could possibly do in this fallen, this fallen, you know, creation.

And we're going to give you the best we can possibly give you. And then they and then the kids are like, yeah, your bounty is my burden.

I don't want any of that. Like, no, but this is this is for your good. Well, isn't that a good analogy for how we see the transition from Old Covenant to New Covenant as in immaturity to toward maturity?

Yeah, that we move. And this is what Paul says in Galatians. We are moving from a position where we're under a tutor and we have we have no inheritance rights or anything.

But then once we've graduated beyond the tutor, now we have like the full rights of sonship and, you know, something has significantly changed between the

Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Milk and honey, which is made by nature for us. And then bread and wine, which we have to have some level of maturity and expertise in order to make and take to the table.

Yeah. So this is that's good to see that the move from the move from immaturity to maturity and the differences between the covenants and the

Old Covenant, everybody was supposed all the male children were supposed to be circumcised, but not everybody there was circumcised of heart.

But you could still be a member of the Old Covenant. In the New Covenant, explicitly, without any exceptions, all the members of the

New Covenant are born again. And and they have the Holy Spirit and they have the they have their hearts of stone have been taken out and they've been given hearts of flesh.

Interestingly, you would write things on stone, but no, the hearts of flesh are put in and then

God writes on the hearts of flesh his law. The Holy Spirit is given to every single member of the

New Covenant so that we desire and live to follow after Christ. And so this is a renewal into the image of God.

Colossians 3 says a renewal that happens no matter where where you come from, no matter what your what your nation is or anything or your status is.

This is a renewal that happens to every member of the New Covenant that we're being renewed into the image of God.

And so so the New Covenant now, the New Covenant and life in Christ and the way that we relate to one another as as Christians and how how things are going to unfold in the life of the church, its

Christian families, its Christian households, in the church as we as we, you know, go forward in our households, in the world, as we teach the nations to to submit to Christ.

That now is the best version of all society. Christian society is the absolute best because we're living on this side of the cross and resurrection and ascension of Christ.

We're living in the light of the substance, not in the shadows.

So, yeah, we don't we don't do everything exactly the way that they have in the

Old Covenant. Certainly not. No, but the things that were there were all pointing to Christ.

So we're certainly not going to reject them wholesale. Besides the fact that Peter tells us that Christ was through his

Holy Spirit speaking through the prophets of the Old Testament. So everything in the

Old Testament Jesus wrote, they're all the words of Christ. The whole Bible should be in red.

So when the New Covenant says, I will put my laws in their hearts,

I mean, I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. The law that is written on our hearts is

Ten Commandments. Is it the entire Old Testament? Is it love your neighbor, love

God supremely, love others rightly, steward creation responsibly, love, you know, love each other as I have loved you?

I mean, when you say the law of Christ, you know, the principles of the Old Testament that are expressed in the new, what is the law that has been written on our hearts?

Because salvation, as you described it, is not just our fire insurance. There is a real change that makes us think and do and be like Jesus.

Yeah. So what is the law of Christ written on our hearts? What is the law that was promised to be written on our hearts in the

New Covenant? And what is this law of Christ that we're supposed to follow? So sometimes reading this passage saying you'll bear one another's burdens and so forth for the law of Christ, this is where Jesus said, you know, love your neighbor as yourself.

By this all men will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for one another. And that to love one another, it is indeed something that Christ wants us to do.

But this is not unique to the New Testament. When the scribe came to him and said, what is, oh great teacher, what is your understanding of the law?

What is your reading of it? And then Jesus replies, what is the greatest commandment? And Jesus replies, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, so mind and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two hang all the law and the prophets. We have a lot of talk these days about love your neighbor, love your neighbor, love your neighbor, love your neighbor.

And a lot of this comes down to whatever the state tells you to do, that means loving your neighbor. Well, you see, you see what happens?

They can't leave love your neighbor alone. They have to provide content for it, right? You can't just say love your neighbor, figure it out for yourself by, you know, based on whatever your experiences or convictions or your imaginations are.

They have to provide content for that. Love your neighbor means do whatever the state tells you to do.

Do whatever the experts tell you to do. That's what loving your neighbor means. But in fact, what

Jesus said on these two, hang all the law and the prophets, he actually fills love your neighbor with a whole bunch of content, and you have to go read it in the

Old Testament. Stuff like, for instance, you know, if you have an ox that's tending to gore people, you need to secure that ox or slaughter it before it gets out and hurts somebody.

That's loving your neighbor. That's the content of the Old Testament. That's an example of how to love your neighbor. So when

Jesus said that, he filled it with a content, and it was biblical content, and it was Old Testament content. So was he saying you have to go back to the shadows?

No, he was not saying you have to go back to the shadows. In fact, he said very much the opposite again and again. But the material and the content of the law is good if it's used lawfully.

Who gets to decide and determine what the lawful use of the law is? Well, I pretty much say the end of the law, the talos of the law,

Jesus Christ himself, the righteous, can tell us what that is. So when we follow him, he's going to lead us into that, is the point.

That's probably not as precise as everyone would like it to be, but I don't think it fails.

Well, it's not precise because having that precise commandment of one little thing here and there is actually another show of immaturity.

Our maturity requires us to go and figure those things out. Yes, and then—

I would like a new list, please. Let's make sure I can check it off and make sure that I'm doing it right.

And make it five. Make it, you know— Condense. Half is easy. When Jesus goes through the parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13, the parables of the kingdom, he takes up Old Testament imagery and he combines it with his new covenant message, his gospel message, and begins to tell things in light of his person and work so that we can understand the way of the world now in light of who he is and what he came to do.

And at the end of all these wonderful parables, he says in Matthew 13, in verse 51, it's kind of a funny thing.

Jesus said to them, have you understood all these things, all these parables? And they said to him, yes,

Lord. That's really funny, but that's what you're supposed to say, right?

Yes. That's what the kids always say. Did you understand? Yes. And then they didn't understand at all.

And I think he knew that. Verse 52, he clarifies. He says this. He said to them, therefore, every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old.

New and old. So Jesus says, if you're going to be a steward in my kingdom, you need to bring out of the storehouses things both new and old.

And when you bring them together, we see the point. And so to me, that's the need.

We say we're not under law, but we're under grace. Well, yes, we're no longer living under shadows.

We're living in the light of Jesus himself. Praise be to God. But that doesn't mean that the things in the Old Testament should be so easily, simply written off.

And that's kind of taken the doctrines of soteriology and then just trying to blanket cover everything else without having to really study.

I mean, because that's a point of contention in soteriological views, right? And you're trying to use a catchphrase in soteriology.

Not under law, but under grace. That's the catchphrase. And trying to use that as a blanket statement to avoid actually having to exegete and understand the phrase, the law of Christ.

Right, yeah. So that would be the way

I would try to approach answering that question. But it's a really big question. It touches on a lot of important issues.

And it could be its own podcast series. I agree. Or separate podcast.

Yeah. Just run with it with a separate podcast. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Well, it ate up most of our time.

So we're going to go to our last two segments of the day and we'll wrap up after that. So for this week in witchcraft, the elements have been conquered with intense heat and witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan.

Can you spot it out in the wild? And our question for witchcraft I have actually brought, but it's not my question.

Again, it's David's. You've said a lot about witchcraft lately, especially making the application that we cannot bring two things that do not belong together into something new by claiming an authority other than from God.

Does that mean we should call Harry Potter or Star Wars demonic since that glorifies actual witchcraft?

Yeah, I would say that saying that saying that Harry Potter and Star Wars glorifies actual witchcraft is like saying that the devil actually is red with horns and a tail and carries a pitchfork wherever he goes on hoofs.

There is a caricature that has some connection. Yes, the devil is sharp and pointy in certain ways.

Yes, he's red in certain ways. There's the fiery dragon. Yes, there is the sneer on the devil's face in the cartoons or whatever.

He's always trying to trick and deceive. There's truth in the caricature, okay? And there is the basis for what goes on in Harry Potter and the basis for what goes on in Star Wars.

There's a genuine basis for it, but they're cartoons. Now, the problem with cartoons and caricatures is that they tend to make us believe that it's more comfortable with the thing, right?

This has been often talked about in terms of the insult, that's so gay, okay?

Back in the 90s, this was the words gay and queer were always being used as insults and using as attacking people and cutting them down and so on.

But this was all cartoons, right? It was all cartoons about weakness and feminacy and so on and toughen up and be a man kind of situations.

These were cartoonish insults, but then the familiarity with it became a downfall.

That was a snare. That was a snare. This is why the scriptures talk about in dealing with the things that should not even be...

Things that are shameful and should never even be talked about, things in the dark. We ought to be infants in concerning the evil and these things need to be exposed by the light for rejection and condemnation, but we should not be dabbling in and being really familiar with all of that and so on.

In the same sense, and Dylan, you've talked about this in terms of dragons, but just the cartoonish, let's get familiar with these things until we call them good, right?

Because now, just like with dragons and with gay and queer and all these other things, magic is seen as a power for good, right?

This is a power for good. Witchcraft is a power for good. And certainly there may be some bad witches out there, but I'm a good witch or whatever, so on and so forth.

And in the... And I know very little about Harry Potter.

Same. I grew up being a fan of Star Wars, but what

I've seen as the trend is the things, they display things in their films and I don't know much about any kind of literature.

I know Harry Potter was a bunch of books written by a feminist who's in a lot of trouble now with the trans community.

Very big trouble. Yeah, very big trouble. She got canceled, but she's very disturbed sitting on her millions and millions of dollars.

But I know more about the Star Wars realm of things. And the tendency,

I think, is to show things that are dark and disturbing, and then you find out later that, no, those dark and disturbing things, that's just your prejudice.

Those were the good. And the bad was really something else, okay? So there's some conditioning and stories and so on, which some of it can be co -opted.

Some of it can be co -opted for good, and you can be subversive with their own messaging, and you can turn it into something positive, which

I think all Christians should be doing with the material of the pagans is to be subversive and turn it into something worth talking about.

You know, Paul subverting the idolatry of Athens into a teaching moment about how ignorant they were of God, these experts on the gods.

Right. That was hilarious. And we can do the same thing in certain contexts, I think, with these.

Now, I would say that if there's danger in Harry Potter and Star Wars, it's about getting people familiar, just trying to desensitize them to magic, witchcraft, so on and so forth.

This is just the way the world works. This is something that is good. This is the way people ought to operate.

You know, that kind of thing. And that if you have these powers of witchcraft and magic, whatever, how it manifests, the manipulation of the force or whatever, that this is how you be a hero.

This is how you're a hero. But the assumptions of magic and witchcraft are the same assumptions as the

Star Wars universe is paganism. It's one -ism. All is one.

All is one in the Star Wars realm. The force is one. There's dark or light about it, but all is one.

In the final film, Jedi and Sith are eliminated and there's only Skywalkers now. So we have a non -binary hero, heroine, whatever she identifies as the end.

This is a great achievement for the Star Wars saga because finally we get to the point where there's no more binary.

And she really is the only one who's ever figured out what the force is all about. She can't get the

Jedi to be with her and she manifests aspects of the Sith and so on.

But really trying to pigeonhole her one or the other, you're the one who's wrong. So this is where they've taken the whole thing.

And I don't know anything about Harry Potter whatsoever. I just know the lightsabers look cooler than wands is essentially where it comes down to.

And you don't like boarding school so much as you would the Jedi compounds. There's obviously probably a lot of similarities between them.

Clothes are completely different though. They all wear robes and they stole children and brought them to school so they can indoctrinate them.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So just like the government school experience. It's the same.

Yeah, it's the same. But I think the point is just to make, say, there's a familiarization that goes on there.

Now the problem is if people think that magic and witchcraft is only when you have a wand and can make some pizazz or you have possession of the force and you can shoot lightning at your fingertips, then that's a problem.

Because witchcraft is, you know, this demonic appropriation of alternate authority is mostly manifest in terms of speaking words and changing reality.

I identify as is one of the most common spells being cast anywhere. And we certainly don't need that.

Right. Right. And if there's some kind of support to that, hey, look, you be you and you do you and whatever, and you just speak it into existence and reality,

I don't care if it's in a charismatic church or it's in the government schools, it's still witchcraft. Right. Because speaking words and changing reality is the realm of God and God alone.

Exactly. So what happens is when you project the creation narrative in Genesis 1 and say, that's all myth and that didn't really happen.

But we speak things into existence. I mean, what did you just do?

You acquired an authority or you have attempted to acquire an authority that is not yours.

Yeah. You ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's what you just did. Yeah, I agree.

And I think one of the other ways that you could actually flip the script on Harry Potter and Star Wars and witchcraft is kind of you did kind of do that.

But to not focus on really what we view as the animistic version of witchcraft or magic, but the more cosmopolitan one where we now have a female character that can throw down with all the best of the men and take everybody in the room with space magic.

And that's a flipping of the reality. That's a flipping of the natural order that we're supposed to be desensitized to by these films that that's the actual witchcraft that they're trying to get through and not the force or whatever else they're trying to throw your way.

And now 140 pound 18 year old, she's graduating from high school and she's going to go join the

Marines and everybody applauds. Right. Why are you applauding?

That's a shame. That's a shame. And she's been discipled otherwise. And so there's a bunch of people in the room.

Right. And why does she think she can do that? Well, the movies said I can. Yeah. The movies also told you, you could convert the bad boy.

Yeah. Thanks, Disney. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So I think that's the witchcraft that we need to be looking out for more often.

And any sort of popular culture, arts or film or writing is not necessarily the stuff that they say, look, this is the explicit magic.

When the real magic is actually happening a few paragraphs down. And that requires a biblical lens.

Yes. So whether you are looking at a Star Wars film, that's more overtly magical, or whether you're looking at a another film on the

Hallmark channel, that is subversively magical, it's the same lens that you're not watching, you know, a good show versus a bad show.

It's like, look, I'm just going to replace our Harry Potter and our Marvel universe with the, what's like the new

Christian network, like the Dove network or something. I'm trying to remember what it is. Yeah, I got you.

It is a. Pure flicks or whatever. Touched by an angel. Remember that one? Oh, yeah. Oh, man,

I hated that show. So to the creators out there, shame on you. Yeah, I'd say those are worse than Harry Potter and Star Wars combined.

But it's the same lens. Yeah. No matter what you're watching and, you know, or whether or not watching, whether you are listening to a political debate, the lens has to be the same.

And it's the lens that you've continually presented, regardless of what question we're asking or regardless of what topic we're discussing.

It's the same lens. And you're just teaching us to wield it and tilt it and says, OK, let's look at this.

Let's now let's look at this from from this angle. It's still the same lens. Right. I think part of is why why is this so attractive to people to to continually to infuse meaning, your own meaning into everything that's happening around you?

Because in a world of of despair and paganism and so on, where you can't get to any kind of objective meaning, thus no objective solutions.

If everything is matter, then nothing matters. And what was the escape from nihilism? It was existentialism.

That was the escape from nihilism. And that's still happening today. Your essence, your your existence precedes your essence.

Therefore, you create your own meaning. You create your own world. You are your own magician. You make your own you make your own thing.

So when people are doing that, they're looking to enrich everything in their lives with some sort of special meaning.

Why do we do that? Because we're made in God's image. It's a crisis of typology, too.

You don't know where you're at in the story. Yeah. So you're going to place yourself. You're going to place yourself exactly where you want to find yourself in those stories.

And a lot of these pop culture ones are they're giving you they're tickling your ears.

They're giving you exactly what you want and where you want to be in these stories. That's what Hallmark does. They're putting you at the center and everything's in orbit around you.

But that belongs to Christ. Right. These these stories that put you on the throne instead of Christ being on the throne.

People going around, I identify as they're putting things up at the right hand of God that don't belong there.

But the whole world is already filled with God's glory.

Right. The entire earth is filled with God's glory. Everything is enriched with the glory of God.

You can go out and mow your lawn and rejoice in all manner of the glory of God.

You can go out and weed your garden. You can hold a baby. You can change the baby's diaper.

You can be out on a nice afternoon and work in your car.

The rain comes and you can stand in front porch and watch the rain. You can spend time with your family, brothers and sisters.

The whole earth is just full of the glory of God. Rich, meaningful experience and is enjoyable and desirable.

And it is a full life. And as soon as we go into idolatry, we exchange the glory of the creator for an image made in the four -footed creatures and man and so on and so forth.

And all of a sudden, everything goes stale and sterile. When we try to put our own, we try to enchant everything with our own stuff, it's idolatry.

And we're missing out on the glory of God. And your stories die. The glory that your stories might have had in the

West, they die. You don't have any more Beowulfs. You don't have any more Tolstoy. You don't have any more

Jane Austen. It gets boring. Yeah, it does. It's boring. Yeah. Because you don't, and you're also, if you're having to import meaning into everything, which is not your position, you can't do it properly.

And when you're trying to do it all the time, you can't recognize where everybody else is supposed to go in that story.

I'll argue to the day that I die that Beowulf was a Christian story written for Christians by a

Christian. And you can pick out the type of Christ. You can pick out the type of the serpent, Leviathan, the dragon, all the way down to the root.

Like, it's just, it's all there. But what we have today is impotent. Right.

Yeah, it's dead because no eyes, eyes that don't see and mouths that don't speak and hands that don't do anything again and again.

When the scripture says, do all that you do to the glory of God, sometimes we get the idea is like, okay, well, that means that I have to muster up extra strength.

I have to think extra hard. I have to stare extra hard. If I want to do all the things that do the glory of God, boy,

I've got to come up with a bunch of extra stuff. To do everything to the glory of God, you don't have to bring anything to it.

It's all there. If you're going to do all you do to the glory of God, you're not going to bring any of the glory of God to it.

It's already there. When you do what you do, when you do it to the glory of God, you're doing what you do in the light of who he is, in the significance of what this means to him for the reason why he would want you to do it.

You're not coming up with anything that isn't already there. Idolatry is hard work.

Yes. It is hard work. It's all consuming too. Yes. I mean, you have to carve that stuff out and you have to make it look good and you have to keep on.

It is hard work. And Jesus says, coming to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest.

And you have to defend it. You know, like Christ, he's his own defense.

I mean, we give apologetics, but we literally do not have to protect our King, whereas they have to protect their...

From getting picked up and walked off with. Yeah. I think Vodie Bauckham actually used that analogy when he said, well, what do you use to defend the

Bible? He says, I don't. I would sooner try to defend a lion.

Yeah, that's straight from Spurgeon. Oh, was it a quote from Spurgeon? Nice. Yeah, a lion defends himself.

Scripture defends itself. Our King is our defense. Right. We're not his. Amen. Amen to that.

All right, well, we'll get into our last segment since we went a little long with that as well as we usually do. But we'll start with Michael and what are we thankful for?

I'm thankful for many answers to prayer in our life as a family with my daughter's lupus and my wife bearing our sixth child and just other prayers, too, that God has answered in terms of just trying to teach our children to love each other and to honor their father and mother and answering prayers that we've had from long ago, you know, prayers to be able to live in our home state here in Oklahoma and be close to family and being able to spend time with them and minister and be a blessing to them.

And God has answered a lot of prayers in that regard. And then, you know, just kind of answering just the bare whispers of prayers that we didn't even know that we were actually praying about, but we were, you know, we didn't know how to pray as we ought, but the

Spirit brought our groanings. You know how we are sometimes. We're talking about this, but we really are really meaning about this over here.

Right. And God bears with our weaknesses and He just has answered many, many prayers and just the abundance of His grace.

But just in particular, you know, blessings upon my eldest daughter and blessings upon my wife as she's nearing the end of her pregnancy.

Amen to that. That's wonderful. I am thankful for my wife who sends me, if you guys don't have this app,

I don't know if you will, but it's called Marco Polo. But it's—and there's video chats and stuff that are out there, but that's one that she has just globbed onto and is now sending it to all her friends.

But we try to do evening reading, evening Bible study, evening family prayer time, something like that.

And my wife and daughter's heart is just turned towards your families, and they just we pray for Becca and pray for Sophie.

They're not my kids, so I get to play favorites. I don't, you know, I like Sophie the best. We just do.

But regardless of where I am, crisscrossing the country, I wanted this to be a priority, and Amy has done that very thing.

So if I'm late or if I'm flying or if I'm working or whatever it is, right now we're going through Psalms.

We just—I think we did 112, 113, I think, last night. So we just—big one, 110, and yes,

I did a whole lesson and stuff to it. I think I bored them to tears. But I wasn't able to join them for some of the later ones, so she's taken up that responsibility, puts them in there, reads them, goes through prayer time, so I get to be a part of it.

So I'm thankful for her. Amen to that. As always, I'm thankful for all of you guys, the conversation that we have, and everybody in the background that nobody's getting to hear right now, but they have probably sometimes better commentary than we do off to the side, and you just don't get to hear it.

We might mic them up someday, but I'm thankful for all these guys. But as we were talking there at the end, one thing

I realize I'm thankful for that I kind of operate under and through all the time is story, that I take in the world that way.

I create in that way as well, and story has led me to a lot of wonderful things that go along with my gifting, but it's what drew me to Christ initially.

And so that's one of the things I'm eternally grateful for in that we get to experience this life as story, but it's not ours.

And I'm thankful for that, because if it were my story, it'd look like everything I wrote. So yeah, and I'm not that proud of that.

I know there are some writers that are, but I'm more proud of what my king has written out for me, his promises that are coming true and that have come true.

And I wait expectantly for and look expectantly for the end of it.

Yeah. So we're thankful for that resolution and the resolution of tonight's episode.

We appreciate all who listen and support this content. Please rate, review, and share. And we hope you'll join us again when we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?