2024 Summer of Interviews: Joshua Banks Interview (2023)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and for the longest time on Wednesdays, we had special guests, and then I don't know what happened. Crossway used to send me free books and other companies, and then I'd have to read the book, and then I'd have to interview the person, and now I want to read what I want to read, so I usually don't have guests on anymore.

But today is an exception because I have a friend, Joshua Banks, on today, No Compromise Radio Ministry, and we're going to learn about Joshua and his ministry and what the Lord has done in his life. So without further ado, Joshua Banks, Pastor Banks, welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Yes sir, thank you for having me. Well, I haven't been called sir all day, but I don't think I've talked to anybody but my wife. Well Joshua, before we get into your ministry, tell our listeners how we met.

We met at the Master's Seminary. The first time we met,.

You were assigned to me to critique one of my sermons, and so our first meeting together was over a Skype call after you had examined one of my sermons there, and I still tell everyone about that first time us meeting because it was very helpful for me, very enlightening for sure, and the way you went about it as well was very entertaining for me and for my wife who was.

Listening. You didn't tell me she was listening. Shame on you. I hope I was nice. Oh yes, yes,.

Absolutely. We had started out with just some small talk, you know, and then you had said something and I started laughing, and then you said, there it is, and I kind of stopped for a moment wondering what you was referring to, and you said, has anyone told you that you have a nice smile?

And I'm like, sort of, you know, and you said, I just saw you 45 minutes with this stern look on your face throughout this entire sermon, and it's refreshing to see you smile. And so, you had asked me what I took to the pulpit, and at the time I was taking a full manuscript, and you had said, do you think it would be inappropriate to put some little smiley faces throughout your manuscript to remind you to ease off, let your people have a break before.

You assault them again? That was very helpful. Joshua, I know men like you because I am a man like you, and I regularly have to say to myself, I should probably smile when I talk about grace and forgiveness and the Lord Jesus and His resurrection, but probably with you, I'm so concerned about fidelity to the text and making sure I don't make a mistake that I get so focused and I'm concentrated on my task that I forget to tell my face.

So I write smiley faces down on my sermon.

Notes, too. Well, it was very, very helpful for me, because there are so many times I can look back and see that I'm supposed to be preaching about something wonderful, like God's grace and God's love, and like you said, it's not registering on my face, you know, that this is good news.

And so now I'm very, very conscious of it now, like, this is good news, and I need to let my.

People know that this is good news. Amen. Well, that's probably one of the benefits of getting a doctorate of ministry in preaching, because if you only had to read 50 books and got critiqued a couple times, that would even be beneficial for us as preachers, right?

Yes, sir. So Joshua, tell us a little bit about your ministry now. You are the pastor, pastor-teacher at Shepherds Rock Bible Church. Tell us a little bit about the ministry there. We had started in 2012, and we were a new.

Church plant, and myself and some other families, we started together, and we've been moving, you know, just trying to continually grow in our knowledge of God and the grace of God, expository preaching, of course.

And so everything is, as far as the church, is always grounded in, revolving around, you know, always founded upon the Word of God, everything that we do and try to do. And there were some times throughout the years in which we went through some very tough times.

We started out wrong, and we, you know, as far as, I guess I should explain we started out, you know, just very similar to how we were before as far as the previous churches we were in with, you know, rock and music and various things like that.

And so we went through a very, very big growth period of coming to understand, you know, the true nature of worship, what worship is supposed to be, you know, founded upon the Word of God. The Word of God is supposed to be the emphasis of everything, including what we sing.

And I remember while I was out at the seminary, Alistair Begg, when he was out there, he had told us that we have no more right to sing a lie than we do to preach a lie. And so we really did an overhaul as far as our music.

And so everything that we try to do now is all saturated with Scripture, the praying, the singing, the preaching. And we're just trying to do, as every other Bible-believing church is, make disciples and.

Grow together. Sounds wonderful. If our listeners want to get online and get to the website, then you can find sermon audio links there as well. You can go to shepherdsrock .org. And by the way, I'm on the leadership page right now, Josh, and it shows a picture of you, hands folded, sitting on the platform there with a huge smile.

Ding, ding, it worked. I know, that is so wonderful. You know, sometimes we're so afraid of smiling Joe Osteen that we think, oh, we can't smile. I was telling someone the other day that I think early on in the ministry here, Josh, I focused more on God's holiness and His righteousness and His anger against sin more than grace and love and other things.

And of course, it's good to preach about God's zeal for His own name and His holiness and all those things, and I would never want to minimize those. But I don't want to also minimize the love of God in Christ Jesus, and I think maybe I push back against evangelical culture that so talked about the love of God in this ambiguous way, and that He's just love, love, love, and there's no other attributes, that I think I reacted.

And so now I'm trying to balance out what I teach. Speaking of which, tell our listeners why do you think a sequential verse-by-verse Bible preaching, expository preaching, helps in that regard to make sure we're teaching everything that we ought to teach?

Why Sequential Expository Preaching Helps Balance the Whole Counsel of God

I think one of the first things is, when you do sequential expository preaching, you're going through the book as it was intended to be read, as it was intended to be understood, and so you're taking the congregation with you on that journey as you begin in chapter 1, verse 1, and then the next week you're in the next set of verses, and so they see how the thought is moving through the book by the author.

And that's the first thing that I think is important to see. When you're jumping from text to text, you always, at least for me, I have to kind of backtrack and bring everybody up to speed as to where we're at here for this verse to put everything in context.

But if you're preaching through a book, the context has been with your congregation since you began in the book, and so you don't have to spend so much time bringing everybody up to speed as you can dealing with the text on that particular Sunday or Wednesday.

And when you do sequential preaching, you have to deal with the text. And so as a pastor, you're growing from it, of course, for every study that you're doing in the Word of God, and especially when it comes to the difficult passages.

So this is promoting growth in you. It's promoting growth in the congregation when you deal with controversial themes or subjects, but it was intended to be understood in conjunction with the rest of the book.

So I think there's some great benefits of sequential preaching.

Amen. Talking to Joshua Banks today, Pastor Banks, and he is at Shepherds Rock Bible Church, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. Virginia, maybe? Oh, where are you, Kingsport? So Joshua, tell us a little bit about the conference.

It's called Deeply Rooted Conference. I think you had one last year, and you're having one this year. How'd that conference all come together, and what's your role in that conference? And lastly, what is your message, topic, or passage,.

Or whatever you want to say? Absolutely. It really started with the one gentleman in particular, Justin Bice, connecting with a number of us Reformed Baptists and wanting to kind of network together, get to know one another, because in our area there are very few Reformed Baptist churches.

Most are Southern Baptist, more on the non-Calvinist side, and so he had us to come together for lunch and getting to know one another. Some of us were familiar with some in the group, but we were able to meet one another, start building relationship, and then the idea came, well, there's not many, you know, conferences in our area that are dealing with the scripture or approaching the scripture from the point of view of Reformed or Calvinistic Baptists, and so we thought, you know, let's put on a conference, and that was really the idea of Justin Bice and Damon Joseph were the two that really, you know, wanted to go forward with that, and so we had it last year, and it went very well.

You know, we had a number of the local guys preaching, including myself, and then, you know, this year we wanted to deal with the subject of assurance because I know I have folks in my church that struggle with assurance as well as these other men and their congregations, and then, you know, this is something that you've written on, that you've done a lot of work on, and what would be better, you know, to start out really as we're moving forward in this conference with dealing with the assurance that we have in Christ, which then gives us a greater peace and a greater joy in the Lord, and so as far as my role, I'm just really one of the speakers.

I help with, you know, some of the planning, as some of the other guys do as well, but it's really us coming together and, you know, tossing around some ideas. You know, you have a lot of wisdom when you have more people there to throw out ideas and to help this thing move forward, and so that's really how it began and how it's been moving forward since then.

We just want to give biblical truth. We want to emphasize the greatness of God and the assurance that we have in Christ. Next year, we plan on having the conference on the Holy Spirit, having a right understanding of the Holy Spirit, the genuine movings of the Holy Spirit, all for the purpose of helping people to grow in the true knowledge of God and in His Word.

The passage of Scripture that I'm going to be preaching is in Romans 4, verses 1 to 8, is right now what I'm studying for, and I'm preaching through Romans, and this particular passage of Scripture for me was just very enlightening, very beneficial, because he's dealing with, you know, talking to the Jews who believe themselves to be in right standing with God because of their heritage, because of them having the law, because they had circumcision, and he really removes, you know, any assurance that they had, you know, in those things, but they had some faulty views of Abraham, for example, and what Paul says in Romans 4, as he begins to talk about Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, as he says, that he wasn't justified by works that he believed, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he's implying to his Jewish audience, you know, you have a really high view of Abraham, and you're trying to, you know, be justified by the works of the law as you believe Abraham was, but Abraham needed to have righteousness credited to him because he didn't have any, you know, and so then he goes to David, and he uses David as an example, quoting from David, and here you have David who wrote, you know, one of the longest psalms on the law of God, longest chapter in the Scripture that deals with the law of God and his love for the law of God and wisdom and keeping the law of God, but this is the same man that then says that, you know, blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sin has been covered, you know, blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account, and so even the acknowledgement of David is, I need a righteousness of not my own, I need to be forgiven, and even though he had this great love for the law of God, it was, he understood that it was not enough, and so when you have those two examples, it really brings out that even the great saints that we look up to in the Old Testament especially, you know, were technically speaking ungodly men who were in need of a righteousness that was not their own.

Well, now you're ruining all.

My flannel graph stories. When I was a kid, David was always good. What? Do you guys do flannel graph stories still? I mean, where are those? That's probably a generation ago. You're probably too young to know about flannel graphs.

Yeah, I'm not sure on that one. They used to have a flannel board in Sunday school rooms, and then you could put characters and backdrops, and you could make it like an ocean, or you could have Jonah and a fish and tell the story with kind of props, and they were flannel and flannel sticks on flannel, and so my older listeners will understand it.

I'm excited for the topic. Assurance is such an important thing these days. It was Rome that took away assurance, right? They called it the sin of presumption. I'm looking at my notes for one of my messages there by Joseph Carl, 1653, and if people are interested in the topic of assurance and the conference, November 10th and 11th, 2023, that's this year, Kingsport, Tennessee, they can register at deeplyrootedpodcast .com.

Here's the quote. The greatest thing that we can desire next to the glory of God is our own salvation, and the sweetest thing we can desire is the assurance of our salvation. In this life we cannot get higher than to be assured of that which in the next life is to be enjoyed.

All saints shall enjoy a heaven when they leave this earth. Some saints enjoy a heaven while they are here on earth. To me, that preaches, so we're going to talk about the doctrine of assurance. We even have a Presbyterian, I think, Sean Morris is going to show up.

How'd.

You let him in? You know, that was a Justin Bice thing. He spoke very highly of this gentleman, and I'm looking forward to meeting him. I haven't got to meeting yet.

I haven't met him either, but I've been listening to PresbyCast, and once in a while Brad, who hosts PresbyCast, will play Sean's sermons on the Ten Commandments. I've been listening to him, and I feel like I've got to know him a little bit.

Joshua, let's talk a little bit about your book. I know you've written a couple books. Talk about your more recent book, why you wrote it, and what's the reception, at least at your local church level?

The Doctrine of Election and Sanctification

It was actually, it started out as being my doctoral dissertation from the Master's Seminary, and you know, around here, and it of course may be the same, you know, in your area also, but when you begin to talk to folks about the doctrine of election, and this is inevitably a conversation that comes up, you know, when you meet new people, you know, what do you think about the doctrine of election, and you have to pause for a minute and be like, are you sure you want to talk about this, but that's happened a few times, but when you get into those conversations, you know, the response usually ends up being, well, what does it matter, because it's not a salvation issue, and you know, granted, it's not.

It's not a matter of, you know, you're saved, or you're not saved, depending on whether you believe the Reformed, or what we would understand as the biblical view of election, but it really, it sparked in me, you know, some thoughts of how to answer that.

Well, it's not a salvation issue, but it has to matter, because it's in the Scripture, and so I went back and began to look through those passages that we often go to, and seeing how it actually connects into some aspect of our growth in Christ, or our overall sanctification, the expression of our love, you know, etc., and so that's what I wanted to write a book on, or write the dissertation on, because I've seen a number of books that deal with the doctrine and defending, you know, the Reformed view against an Arminian view, but to really see it, you know, what's the practical aspect of this, you know, what's the practical outworking of this, you know, that's why I wanted to write it, to show folks that this really does matter.

It does have an effect on, you know, our love for Christ, and our growth, and all of that, because it's always tied to some aspect of our sanctification. It's never just written, you know, in the Scripture, just to write that, you know, God chose us, and then move on to something else.

It's God chose us, and so this is to promote in you the praise of His glory. You know, God chose us, and now you have, you know, a basis for the character that we have now in Christ, based on, you know, what He did, and His grace in, you know, saving us.

So, there are so many passages there that deal with, you know, the doctrine of election, and then connecting it into, now this is the result of having this understanding, and, you know, as far as our church level, you know, goes, you know, have some great feedback, you know, from folks.

It seems to be very helpful to them to see the importance of it, that it's not just taught in a vacuum. It really has, you know, a practical aspect to it, as well. Some other folks that have read the book, have had good feedback from them.

You know, you always have some that, not so much, but it seems like, you know, for the most part, that it has been a benefit to folks, and that's all I ever wanted, was just to be able to help in seeing the importance of this, and the effect that it can.

Have in our lives. Talking to Pastor Joshua Banks today. When you introduce yourself to people, do you say, Hi, I'm Dr. Joshua Banks? You know, I don't think I've ever done that. Good, because I was going to have to, as your former professor, I was going to have to get after you.

Now, if somebody else introduces you as that, that's fine, but we just don't self-introduce as, Hi, my name is Dr. Mike. Yeah, I'm with you there. I feel very awkward. You know, I think.

Last year, Justin, as he was introducing me from my session, you know, he said, you know, Dr. Joshua Banks, and you know, you're waiting to kind of walk over to the pulpit, and you're like, Man, that just feels very weird.

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to get used to that.

I know. Well, I'm looking forward to meeting you face-to-face. The backdrop for the listeners, they probably don't know this. I'm sure Joshua does. I started my treatments for leukemia, and I just felt awful, and it just felt like everything was kind of closing in.

Couldn't really think. I was preaching, but that was about it. I would walk in kind of when the church service started, preach, then walk out, and I thought, I just, I can barely get through the day, let alone fly to Tennessee.

And so I called Justin, and he was super gracious, and he understood, and everything else, and I thought, I just can't—I mean, I just felt horrible. Well, then the next day, it was like, all of a sudden, the light went back on, and I could think, and I thought, What am I doing?

I'm not a canceler. I mean, this is an appropriate reason to cancel. So I called him back and said, I uncancel. I just want you to know, I normally—my yes is my yes, and my no is my no. So Josh, I don't know if Justin told you that story or not, but I still.

Plan on being there next Thursday. Well, no, we were super excited. He had let us know that, and all of us were thinking, you know, well, absolutely. I mean, you know, that takes a lot out of you, having to do those treatments and all that, and so all of us were very, very understanding that he was able to share that with, and then I got excited once again.

When we heard that, Yeah, you are coming. All right. Well, I normally don't get a lot of vaccines in my life, and because my immune system will be lower, they said, You need to get the RSV vax, the COVID vax, and the flu vax, and so I said no to RSV and no to COVID, but I talked to my other doctor, and he said, Ah, you're probably—it's okay if you get the flu shot, no big deal, 50 -50, and I got it, and I think that's what did me and Joshua for five days, add that to the cancer medicines, and that's what did me in, so I think that wore off.

I'm never going to get another one. That wore off, and then I could kind of think, and so I feel a little odd, just in terms of not really dizzy, but just kind of weird, but I can think and work and, you know, I'm meeting with people again and preaching, and I get tired.

That's okay. Justin said he'd take me around and show me all the tourist sites down there. I don't know what those tourist sites are, but I'm ready to take a look at them.

Yeah, I have to ask him where he's going to take you. I'm not sure what he has in mind.

I know. Well, I think he said he'd take me about anywhere, but I was looking, and I guess maybe there's, I don't know, there's probably some fun place to eat or something like that. Who knows? We'll have fun.

I'm sure it's very beautiful as well. Josh, in the time we have left, I want to ask you, what's your view of evangelicalism today? What do you think's good in modern evangelicalism, and what's something you think is not so good?

In other words, what are you encouraged by, and what do you think needs some shoring up?

Concerns About Secularism, COVID, and Factionalism in Evangelicalism

I think, well, I'll start with the thing that probably the biggest concern is, of course, secularism and how it affects the young people. Watching videos of various ones that are out street preaching and all of that, and seeing just the hostile reactions, but they're learning these things from the universities.

You think of, for the ones that I'm aware of that have started out in the church, and then once they got to the university or they graduated high school and went on to their career of how they've left the faith in that sense, and you wonder what it is that's happening.

Is it the churches that perhaps are not giving a solid foundation of the Word of God? Is it the churches that are not answering the difficult questions that they may have and relegating everything to an act of faith?

Those are the things that concern me as far as the church's role in preparing the young people for what they face in the secular universities and all that. So, I'm very concerned on that of churches striving to equip their young people and see that they are truly converted, or trying to equip them so that the Spirit of God, of course, is the one who converts, but to do all that they can in hopes of that, in prayer of that.

The thing that I'm encouraged by is, it seems that there is a lot, since COVID, there seems to be a lot of those that are rising up and really bringing everything, every thought captive to the obedience of Christ when it comes to the COVID vaccine, when it comes to the lockdowns and all of that, really emphasizing.

It seems like it has woken up the giant of a lot of Christians, the genuine Christians as a whole, and that's been very encouraging to see that, and the pushback, and the emphasis on the kingship of Christ, and for the state, you're to be the state, we're the church, you don't tell us, you know, how we can operate.

I guess there's only one other thing that I suppose would be like a little bit of a concern, and that is, and mainly just in the reform camp, and in reform, I'm using that very generally, you know, with our Presbyterian brothers and sisters, and the Baptist brothers and sisters, all of that.

I think one of the things that concerns me is, it seems like, you know, you have what's going, what was going on in Corinth, you know, that I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Christ, I'm of Cephas, and a lot of that seems to occur within the reform camps to some extent.

We base our fellowship with one another, you know, and depending on who our favorite theologians are. You know, if you don't agree with my theologian that I enjoy most, then, you know, then that may affect our fellowship, and it seems like all the subsets of the reform faith, whether or not, you know, you're this, or you're that, or you sign that document versus this document over here, and it seems to, you know, just be so many hoops to jump through as to who I can fellowship with, where do I fit in, and rather than understanding that some of these things are just going to be secondary issues, but we can still get along regardless if I listen to your theologian or not, you know, that seems to be something that is a concern.

Well, Josh, I agree with you. It's a conversation I had with someone a few days ago, and I said, I think some of these things kind of occur because we have our inner fundamentalists pop out with second-degree separation issues, but theological issues, and so, oh, you don't believe this, that, or the other, and you read this guy, and therefore, since you read that guy, I don't like you and everything else, and I just think, oh, it is crazy.

But, you know, I know Rome attacks us for some of these splinter things, but that's all right. We will keep preaching the truth, and I'm thankful for you and your ministry. If anyone wants to get a hold of Josh, I'm sure there's something on his website that you can get a hold of him, shepherdsrock .org, if you want to pull up some of the sermons.

He's on Sermon Audio as well, and they probably have the 2022 Deeply Rooted Conference messages up online as well. And so, Joshua, I look forward to seeing your smiling face. I'm looking at the eight speakers.

Let's see. I'm smiling, you're smiling. One, two, almost—I think everybody's smiling, even the Presbyterian. Sean is even smiling, so I'm thankful for that. Yeah, yeah, we'll make sure to get some good pictures of him.

Anyway, thanks for being on the show, I really appreciate it, and I look forward to hearing you preach and meeting you in person. Pastor Joshua Banks, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Thank you for having me, sir.