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 yesterday.

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.

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. Do 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?

The Pastor, the Bereans, and Testing Doctrine by Scripture

Yeah, that's a good question. There's 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? 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, in any, 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, chapter 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.

Right?

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 a great, I'd 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 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 2017. It was the 500-year anniversary of the Reformation. Desiring God puts up these posts that says, you are not saved by faith alone. Be killing your sin. Well, that's going to blow up the evangelical internet.

And then, so this causes a big ruckus. And then Piper comes out on October 31st, 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 when I read that, I'm like, I'm confused. I'm all over the place. 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? 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're ultimately in the final estimate, you're saved by grace alone through faith alone in 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.

I was like, wow, this lady is putting 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 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 personality, a cult personality. And I don't even think that... 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?

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

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 business questioning the big dogs.

Okay.

That kind of approach...

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

Well...

I'm married to one.

But here...

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.

To me, it was thoroughly ironic. 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 them a big personality.

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? Does he do a due diligence? Does he rightly study to show himself approved? Is he just coasting, especially the guys who get older on the later parts of their careers, and 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, as long as it's S asked in the right spirit, of course.

Yeah.

And it might be someone who's like, well, I don't understand it either. 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. As a pastor, it doesn't mean that I have all the answers on the Bible 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 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 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 intention.

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 intention together, and I think they probably say it with a lisp, but that they're intention 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 intention 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 know the answer to. There's some stuff that I feel pretty strong on that it probably end up turn out that I'm.

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'm committed... I want to be committed to...

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 a 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.

So 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 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.

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 the rule, because there's always exceptions of 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 Postmill,.

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, you know, okay, they said that, so this is what I'll say. You know, there's a great danger in that. And it usually shows up by people eventually, you know, leaving the fellowship of the Church and never coming back.

Usually that's where it ends up, you know, because their whole Christian faith has been one of parroting, and they never really own it for themselves. And, you know, occasions happen, things happen, and then they don't, 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, 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 at some point.

Oh, absolutely. 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, you know, beyond that.

The Law of Christ, Grace, and the Fulfillment of the Old Covenant

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 under law, or 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.

I know there's a passage in Galatians.

Is it Galatians?

Yes, I know there's a passage in Galatians. So 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 family members. But I'd used that phrase and said, 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, you know, we're not under law.

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

Yeah, I gotcha.

They're saying the parrot. They're parroting. They're 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, no, we're under the law of Christ.

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, 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 all kinds of people from all sorts of positions would be in agreement with that.

That'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 spent a lot of time with it. And they would certainly be interpreting the law of Moses according to 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, the rich man and Lazarus, the leper, in his parable where the rich man goes to Hades and the leper goes to this favorite position in heaven, you have the description of this man in hell or in Hades calling out and saying, you know, could you send Lazarus, this poor leper, back from the dead and go warn my brothers?

And Jesus is like, 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, it's not just about scripture interpreting scripture.

It has to be according to Christ for it to make sense. 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 dispensations. God keeps his promises.

Amen.

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 in Old Testament Israel. Now, he decided how that was going to be done, but the principle is still the same.

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.

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 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?