Have You Not Read - S1E29

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

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

Thank you. I'm Dylan Hampton and with me are Michael Durham, David Kazin, and Andrew Hudson.

Today we have a question sent in from one of our listeners. The question reads, I would love to know how you each would categorize yourself theologically and how you came to hold these views.

Michael, would you mind letting the audience know how we're going to answer this? Yeah, so we discussed how we're going to try to approach this.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to name a very broad category of doctrine and then we're going to talk about which side of the issue we're on and why.

I think this will move us along at a fairly good rate and also avoid any overly technical terminology unless we want to bring it up and then define it.

So starting off, I think classically we should just start with our view of the Bible and I'm going to split it up into two camps.

Okay, how about hermeneutic? Hermeneutic is the way we see things, the way we interpret things. So when you come to the Bible, do you have a hermeneutic of suspicion or a hermeneutic of submission?

What's the difference? A hermeneutic of suspicion is something that you might do when you read a book and you kind of trying to figure out what is this author really up to and you know, are they really making their points well or are they, you know, they have an agenda or here's their mistakes and so on.

Versus a hermeneutic of submission, I'm coming to this text as my authority. Well, I think most of us would, if you're going to put it into those two camps, then we would be in a hermeneutic of submission, which is the appropriate response to the divinely inspired

Word of God. So because we hold to this is the Word of God as given to us through the words of men, then we say, all right, yes.

So we take it and accept it. But the hermeneutic of suspicion has an appeal where you say, well,

I want to really get to what this author was saying. That's not the same thing. Getting to what this author was truly saying is the original author to the original audience.

How does it apply? It's still submission, right? So we're not just reading it and then repeating it as, as if it's a mantra that is not submission.

You have to have an understanding, a rational intellectual understanding in order to submit and follow.

So hopefully that's, that's clarifying which the Bible itself commends. The Bible is a revelatory experience and reveals something about humanity that humanity doesn't know of itself in and of itself.

So I guess maybe there's some anthropology and some epistemology wrapped up into that, which we'll get to, but it is the truth as revealed by the truth teller.

I'm into that submission all the way. Yeah. So when you, when you think about the ways in which the

Bible is treated wrongly, it all comes from the hermeneutic of suspicion. So when people are claiming that there are errors in the

Bible or failures in the Bible, whose Bible isn't clear or the

Bible is outmoded, outdated, not for us in some fashion, all of these things come from a hermeneutic of suspicion.

Hermeneutic of submission is, is not going to entertain those approaches, right?

We're going to come to the word of God and say, you know, what I find here is true. Yeah, it is good.

It is profitable. It matters. Here's the scepter of Christ's authority in our lives.

So that's, that's the two different approaches to the, to the Bible. We start there because we come to know the particulars about God and man and salvation and you know, everything else that's pertinent to theology and less to all of our lives.

Uh, we learned that from the scriptures. So moving on from how we approach the

Bible, uh, we could ask the question, what do we think about God? Which is again, you know, a massive question, but here's a pertinent one.

Do we see God as a sovereign or limited? I would hold that God is sovereign and outside of his creation.

So we have, you know, often we say, you know, that God exists as creator and has created all that is outside of himself.

It is not one with creation, which is one is a pantheism. We are theists where God creates and he has absolute sovereign control over his creation.

And as the word of God is says that he knows the end from the beginning, that no one resists his will.

He knows what's going to happen in the future because he causes it. The creator creation distinction

I think is very appropriate. You also have as revealed in his word, what we describe as Trinitarian or the, the

Trinity as God's revelation of his personhood. Amen.

Sovereign Godhead. Yeah. So when we think about who God is as revealed in the scriptures, we have been helped by our spiritual ancestors to talk about the character of God and the nature of God, the characteristics of God, and that fact that he is

God is love. He is merciful. He is righteous. He's faithful. And, but also we can talk about the attributes of God, that he's eternal.

He's unchanging. He's self -existent. Impeccable. Yeah. Impeccable. And we can talk about all of those things.

Now, when we, when we think about these things and meditate on these things, we're led to worship. As Proverbs talks about, a word that he's spoken is like apples of gold and settings of silver.

That's what happens when we begin to take up the character of God and the attributes of God and bring them together.

Not only is he holy, he's eternally holy. Not only is he merciful, but he is unchangingly merciful.

You know, we begin to bring those things together and we begin to meditate on and worship and rejoice in this

God who has made us and is bigger than us and beyond us and yet has condescended to us.

And he's made this in his image. So that moves us on to mankind or anthropology as we would use a different term.

But when we think about man, we could split it up in a couple of different ways, but let's just do this.

Is man basically good or is man basically depraved? By basic, you mean at the base level?

At the base level, man is depraved. Yeah. Well, if we use the term radical in terms of meaning to the root.

Oh, radically depraved. It begins in the heart, right? Yeah. The heart is, is exceedingly wicked.

Who could know it? Right. Yeah. Some have phrased it this way that we are not all as bad as we possibly could be, but there's no aspect of our humanity that is not tainted by sin, that every aspect of ourselves, our mental, physical, our will, our moral compass, if you want to use that phrase, our understanding of our creation itself, all of it, every aspect of our humanity is in some way marred by sin.

Not fully depraved in magnitude, but in totality. And not in magnitude because it shows his mercy on us.

Amen. You know, it gives us, when we don't have the fullness of what we could be, we're being shown something about God as well.

I think that's a interesting point on that. And given this negative description of mankind, depraved, wicked, unrighteous, so on and so forth, we recognize that there's a standard.

We recognize that there's something that we're being compared against, right? And of course we remember that God created

Adam and Eve, created mankind in his own image, male and female, he created them, and he told them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

And God making us in his own image puts us into a unique intersection between himself and one another in the created order, to where we are to love

God supremely, love each other rightly, and steward the creation and righteousness as well.

So we are made in the image of God and thus all sorts of things are true about us, whether we like it or not.

We wear the uniform of God and if we rebel against him we fall short of the glory of God and the wages of this sin is death.

We are created in the image of God thus the worship switch is hardwired on and we're always worshiping something or someone and we have to take an account of that.

So when we think about the fact that God is sovereign and holy and good and immense and eternal and so on, and that he has made us in his image and yet we are depraved, fallen in sin, and radically depraved, and then this brings us to the the doctrine of salvation.

When it comes to salvation we think of some terms, that we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

So there's that option and the other option is we get rid of the alones. What do y 'all think?

Yeah that's well said. Well you have, hopefully those who are listening are seeing exactly what we're doing.

We're building the case, we're narrowing things down, but you started with the Word of God. So you said this is who, this is what the

Word of God tells us who God is and what the Word of God tells us who, you know, what man is.

And the Word of God tells us about the standard and how far short mankind falls.

What does the Word of God say about salvation itself? This depraved person that's an image -bearer of God, has a responsibility to worship, that worship is hardwired, is not worshiping, but is instead serving, you know, serving themselves.

Well if I can strike to the to the heart of it, pun intended, man's heart is completely turned away from God in rebellion to God, in active rebellion.

Yeah, using Romans chapter 1 all the way through 8, you have humanity in and of themselves, left to themselves, worship anything other than God.

A purposeful, willful rebellion to God. And you go all the way through, in Romans chapter 3, there is none righteous, no not one, no one seeks after God, no one does, all the way to Romans chapter 8, that no one submits to the law of God and is not even able to do so.

Right. So we have a doctrine of not just total depravity, but an inability for human beings in and of themselves to repent, believe, even understand these things, you know, these things of God.

Because our will, knowledge, the way we see things, is so incredibly marred by our sin and our remaining, our remaining sin.

So we would have, if you want to put us into, want to put me into a category, then

I would say that it would be, you know, Calvinist, in that if you want to put a word on it, monergist would have to be the the word that I would use.

That it can't be mankind doing it, it must be God from the outside doing it, because we are unwilling to do so and unable to do so.

Total inability. So monergism means a single work, right, the single energy, single effort there.

All right, Andrew? I would just summarize from Colossians chapter 1, he delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the

Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. It was what he did for us.

Amen. Hearty amen to everything there. Yeah, when it comes to these alones, I think it's very important that not only do we maintain them at the beginning, but we maintain them all the way through.

The testimony of the Word of God is that we don't get to begin by the Spirit and continue by the flesh, and that when it's all said and done, we are in joy around the throne of God.

The praise is that salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb who's on the throne, and that our crowns are cast down before Him and glory to Him.

So whether we're thinking about the beginning or the middle or the end of our salvation, the alones still matter.

We're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and those alones matter all the way through.

And so I think that that's a good way to talk about it. There are other particular facets we could talk about, and we'll leave those for after our last dichotomy that we can flesh out, and then if we have particulars we want to talk about, we'll talk about that at the end.

The last one is, how's it going to turn out? Good or bad? I was given a note that I'm going first this time, so I'll go ahead and take a crack at it.

Good. I think it's gonna turn out well. I think we've been told from the beginning of the

Word we've been given that we find an errant, that it's gonna turn out well. I think the promises that were given to Abraham, having their yes and amen in Christ, will be fulfilled, and the seed will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and as numerous as the pebbles of sand on the beach.

So I'm of the mindset that it is going to be fruitful and not unfruitful.

So we we've moved from God is the one who saves, and you had referenced it, why is

God doing this? Well, you know, it's by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone, to the glory of God.

So however God is glorified, whether that is in punishing sin, distributing mercy, showing

His holiness, showing His justice, showing His love, showing His grace, He is displaying

His glory. And if the greatest good is God, then displaying

His glory is serving the highest good. So no matter what happens as far as numbers go, or percentages go, as far as the amount of humanity that's saved among the mass of humanity that's not,

God is glorified, and that is good. So you're asking how things turn out.

It's going to be good, because God is good, and glorifying God is good. I'll just read from Revelation chapter 22,

I'll start in verse 3, and there will no longer be any curse, and the throne of God and the

Lamb will be in the city. His servants will worship Him, and they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.

Night will be no more, and they will not need the light of a lamp, or the light of the sun, because the

Lord God will shine on them, and they will reign forever and ever. Forever and ever. It's coming up all good.

Yeah, so I think when it comes to how it all turns out, well, Jesus has risen from the dead, and He ascended at the right hand of the

Father, and there He will reign until all of His enemies are made a footstool for His feet, and the last enemy is death.

And then He comes to give His kingdom and present His kingdom to the

Father as completed, as the faithful servant who has accomplished all that the

Father has given Him to do, so that God is glorified in all forever and ever. So yeah,

I think it turns out really well. I think Christ wins, and He wins big. So, I mean, we just went through some major theological categories.

Hopefully that gives a better sense for the questioner where we're at. Obviously, sometimes when we begin to talk about our theological positions, there's a lot of shorthand that is used in terms of theological terms, but I think that sometimes it's helpful to to walk through doctrinal convictions in the way that we just did, because there's a lot of agreement and a lot of unity amongst the people of God about these matters.

So the second part of this question was, how did you come to hold these views?

So most of what we had talked about, most of the

Church, as you said, has a lot of agreement. There's a, you know, you start diverging when you talk about the total inability of mankind, and then when you talked about Christ being on His throne until all of His enemies are made of footstool forest feet and raining now, there's some implications to those things.

So I would like to know, how did you guys come to a belief holding to God moving first,

God saving us out of a mass of humanity that deserved and deserves punishment, as we all do, but God reaching down and changing that, because that's not where I started out.

Yeah, I didn't start out there either, and you know, every, well, maybe not every Christian would define themselves as a

Bible -believing Christian based on that hermeneutic of suspicion. I believe Andy Stanley would defer from saying that.

Yeah, exactly. He don't hit himself. But after further reading in the

Bible, what I read didn't indicate that what I was doing was what made the difference.

I wasn't the deciding party or factor in any of salvation or that I was the one fulfilling

God's plan for my life. It was all what he was doing and what he had done and what is doing.

When I read, whether it's Old Testament or New Testament, I don't, I don't see any room for my co -laboring with him in anything good.

All of what I see is the life of the Spirit at work in a vessel. There's nothing good in and of a myself.

You know, in many ways I feel like my spirit is tied to my flesh at times, where my flesh wants to do one thing, but my spirit is against that.

I think we read about that in Romans, but there very often I find this dichotomy between, you know, consistently failing on my own efforts and him succeeding in my weakness.

Right, so like we would, we would actually say that no human starts out a monergist, probably. Like we all, like we're all relying on our own works and you only have monergism revealed to you.

It's humbling. Yeah, yeah. It's like, then that's how I viewed it was, I went through a long period of synergism on my, or, and when you really get down to it, it wasn't synergism, it was monergism of my own, right?

Like, so I believed solely in my own works, but I had not had certain passages revealed to me for most of my childhood, even within Sunday schools and sermons.

The centrality of God's work in salvation and his work alone was never preached or taught to me.

And so, in a sense, it was never really revealed to me and I didn't do enough reading to have it revealed to me.

And then once I did enough reading, it was revealed. And growing up, I was taught, you know, that the starting point was you have a free will and God is still, you know, in control.

So there has to be a balance. All about the balance. And I hear that often.

It says, well, there's a balance. There's always a balance in scripture. And that's, without going into too much history, that's all that is, is part of Western culture's love of Aristotle and the golden mean.

And so, well, you know, you have an extreme position, you have another extreme position, the truth is somewhere in the middle. And that was my starting point.

And I hear that often from, you know, other people that are on the opposite side of the spectrum, you know, of the more

Arminian mindset. And hear all their reasons why it has to be a balance, an interchange between the two.

You know, God doesn't want robots and doesn't want this, but is all coming from this logical, you know, syllogistic argument from a point of origin.

And their point of origin was that, okay, there has to be a balance. I know that there is, because that's my starting point. And when

I kind of gave that up and said, well, what's the starting? Well, what does the scripture say? Okay, well, the scriptures talk about an elect.

And then the scriptures talk about how we've exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And then the scriptures talk about that, you know,

God's the one that grants repentance. And then the scriptures also talk about that you're unable to submit to the law of God, nor are you even able to do so.

Isn't repentance, you know, part of the what God wants you to do. And you're in willful rebellion against him.

And as I just kept reading and went, I don't like this. This goes against what

I thought was true. And I have all these people that I respect and love that says, no, there has to be a balance between the two.

It says, no, your starting point is wrong. The starting point of the scripture. And that was our starting point for this, this whole discussion.

It was a hermeneutic of submission to the word of God that says, this is who you are.

And this is who God is. You're not going to like this, but it is, you're, you're really bad and God is really good.

And when God saves you, changes you into an image of his, his, you know, his son, he covers you with the blood of Christ and it's okay that you didn't have a play in it.

It's better that you didn't. It's better that you did. You're not a, not a robot. You know, all of these, these emotional appeals to your free will or anything else.

In the end, the Bible clearly clearly says you are without God and you will not submit.

You are in rebellion. And the only way you're going to be saved is if he changes your will. I was pretty much theologically novice.

I didn't have any depth of anything when I went to college, but I did know that the Bible was true, right?

And God was big. You know, I knew those things. Okay. When I got to college, which is a mid

America Christian university here in town, my first professor was an open theist. You know, God doesn't know the future because humans haven't decided yet.

I have professors, they were, you know, talking about errors in the Bible. I had a professor, he was a, he was a huge fan of Karl Barth, you know, orthodoxy.

And I looked around at what was being taught, what was being preached in chapel, you know, God is your biggest fan kind of stuff.

And then the lives of the students being discipled by this stuff. And I was like, well,

I'm going to go the opposite direction, you know, and the providence of God ended up at a church where they constantly talked about that.

God is big and man is small, you know, and they taught the doctrines of grace. I went out and got,

I bought a book, uh, the reformed doctrine of predestination by Lorraine Boettner. Yeah.

Yeah. And I read that thing through cover to cover and that was really helpful. But you know, there was one chapel service where somebody had invited a guy to come in to preach and nobody really knew who he was, but he came in and he basically got up there and sort of preaching.

He said, um, you know, uh, God is not your biggest fan. God is God's biggest fan. He loves and glorifies himself more than any other.

And that's the way it has to be. Otherwise he'd be an idolater and just wrecked everybody out there.

I mean, they were just, they were, they didn't know what to do. I mean, they almost had to cancel school.

I mean, it was like, so anyway, um, I had a better vetting next time. It was an unrecorded

Paul Washer moment. Yes, it was. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. But I was like, yeah, there you go.

So I was greatly helped by my local church. You know, there's fundamental convictions that were given to me by my father, who was my pastor, but those were tested and all came back to the scripture.

And that's where my pastor in college talked to me about the battle for inerrancy. The Bible is true.

And that's where everything for me began. It's like, well, the Bible is true. Doesn't matter what's in there. It's true. And so I don't like it.

It makes me uncomfortable. It doesn't matter. It's true. And that's just how I began to, to move through the, the whole learning and growing up process.

So I will, hopefully this was, this will stir the pot just a little bit.

I have said before, as people have asked me about this podcast and the people that we have on, and not all of us are all in the room at the same time, but you know,

I've said, we're not monolithic, we're not carbon copies of each other. We have a great deal of agreement, but I wanted to know, are there areas in which we disagree?

Dylan, is this like a Donald Rumsfeld, unknown, unknown moment? I don't know if I don't know if they don't.

Yeah, that's exactly what this is. We've avoided talking about it until this point kind of thing. Oh, um,

I, I don't know everyone's theological positions on every single jot and tittle.

So I would say, I'm sure that there are disagreements that we have. I'm sure there are disagreements between even those of us who are closest and being carbon copies, because that's, you can't avoid the disagreements on stuff.

And my disagreements would probably be something that are beyond tertiary with you guys.

I would think in certain cases. So, um, I've got one, you got one. Yeah. The other day,

Michael had said something about dogs dying and not going to heaven. Hey, now is that real fight?

Is that script guys? See, I watched that movie. Uh, and there was a lot of theological issues.

I noticed all dogs go to heaven. That's the movie being referenced pastoral to say that people's loved ones, loved pets don't go to heaven.

How dare you? Oh man. We have, uh, we'll reference, um, old

Baptist confessions. Um, we'll reference, um, Philadelphia, uh, the 1689 and the 1644, which

I actually carried a copy of the 1689 for a while. And now the 1644 just in my bio,

I think it's a really good, um, summary and a good historical work and something that, uh, Baptist in particular should be familiar with, but I am not confessional with the 1689 and I'm not

Sabbatarian. And there are reasons, reasons for that, but I did want to see where you guys stood on 10 commandments,

Sabbath keeping, and then the, you know, confessional. Cause somebody asked me that, are you a reformed Baptist as well? Technically?

No, because I didn't sign, you know, the 1689 in my own blood. I mean, it's not something that I adhere to, but I do like the ideas of confessions, but I can't be a full subscriber to do any, do any of those.

I had a 1689 coffee mug, but the 1689 got washed off, like wore off.

So I took it as a sign. Well, and since you brought up the question, do you have any ideas of where you disagree with some of us?

Like, cause I, I'm, I'm thinking you might have something in mind that we are not seeing. Well, I brought up the

Sabbatarian issue just to see if, uh, anybody disagree and disagreed with, with it. And I think that we're all kind of on the same page as far as that level of confession, uh, confessionalism goes.

Um, I am not post -millennial or that is, I'm not a preterist in the, in the partial preterist in the sense of R .C.

Sproul or even, even our, our, our pastor. Uh, I'm more of a traditional reformed amillennialist.

The irony of course being is that all are, that all amillennialists are technically post -millennial. If you, uh, you said that Christ coming back after the millennium, because it's the current reign of Christ between the two advents.

Uh, but it doesn't have the earthly implications. Yeah. The implications of a, a growing, um, cultural influence of the church in the world.

Um, I see the, the church growing, the, the, the, the, the kingdom being not of this world growing throughout the entire world while at the same time, the wheat and tares are growing at the same time and at the end harvest, that's when the separation occurs.

But the, the, the kingdom of God that we have now, uh, that's growing currently is very much not like the geopolitical kingdoms in the past.

And I don't see a cultural domination in the scriptures. I see that growing underneath and that the natural and common experience of the

Christian will be persecution. So that's probably an area on which we disagree. Okay.

Would you say that in the increase of his government, there shall be no end? Would you say all millennialists believe the same thing as post -millennials that the increase of his government?

Yeah. That he, that Christ is King reigns now and no one will dethrone him and that, uh, that he will reign in perpetuity.

Um, and that eventually all of his enemies will be, you know, destroyed, but there'll be destroyed at his second coming.

Is that any different than the post -mill view of the increase of his government? Well, again, it depends on, okay, so some post -mill renderings are going to be looking at, we're only goodness.

How many translate, how many, how many generations in so far? You know, 150.

Yeah. Yeah. We're only 150 generations in God's faithfulness is to a thousand generations, which we don't understand, you know, however many that is the fullness, but a thousand is the way we belong to 150, you know?

So when we think about what lies ahead, you know, who knows, you know, our, you know, our experience of the here and now tells us that things can be pretty rough as far as the unity of the church and the activity of the church and the, you know, there's persecution and so on and so forth.

But we've seen, so we've seen, we've seen the Lord do some amazing things in the last, so 2000 years from where we began, where we are now.

Are there more believers on the planet earth today than there were, you know, 100 years ago? We see a, we see a massive growth that I think everybody can agree on when it comes to, you know, that the parable about the 11 and the dough and the growth of the fig or the, um, the mustard seed into a tree, you can see how there has been growth.

I mean, the gospel praise God didn't stay in Jerusalem. It didn't go to Judea.

It did go to Samaria. It is going throughout all of these different parts of the earth. Do I think that there's going to be some, uh, one world, a

Christian government with a, um, some sort of, uh, holy potentate at the top, you know, and basically all problems have been put down to a minimum of static.

And then everybody knows this is Christ doing, and he's done it over all these generations.

And then when everything is bright and shiny, then he comes back. I don't know. When I read the scriptures, it,

I tend to see there's a lot of, you know, we're weak, he's strong. He triumphs through our weaknesses.

It's not something that we, uh, that we orchestrate, ordain and predict. It's something that he brings about.

And we do know there has been genuine works of the Lord in revivals in, in history.

And we, we've seen this, you know, and we just give praise to God when we, when we, and they're always, you know, messing and there's controversies that happen in them and all that.

But it, you know, what is it all based on? It's based upon the sovereignty of God is based upon the power of the

Holy Spirit. I mean, I don't know how he's going to do it. I know he's going to win big and all he's got to do is breathe and the

Holy Spirit wash across and we'll see what happens. Like, oh my goodness, we have no idea how fast it can happen.

We have no idea how fast it can happen. So I know that we can't be looking around and reading the newspapers and saying, well, there's no possible way

Jesus is coming back anytime in the next 10 years, because boy, there's a lot of work to do. I'm not saying that I'm also not saying there's not a lot of work.

Let's get busy. Okay. But, uh, but so some post -millennial readings are going to be looking for some kind of, uh, everything, like I said, doing really, really, really, really well for Christ comes back.

I don't know if that's an essential reading of the post -millennial position. I already see a lot of wonderful things that have happened so far.

And I think even more wonderful things are ahead. Will this mean the elimination of problems and persecution?

Not necessarily. That probably makes me not as stout of a post mill as, uh, others.

So maybe want to call me, um, optimistic all mill, but I don't think,

I don't think I actually fit there given some of my other convictions. So I really do think that's where the split is though.

I think it's, it really is, you know, which emoji are you using with your eschatology?

Right. That's a reference to the pessimistic, optimistic from, uh,

Greg Bonson. Right. No. Yeah. But he didn't know about emojis. No, no, he didn't.

The Lord took him before that trial. Yeah. He's thankful for that. He's quite thankful for that. I'm sure birthing person.

So, um, just a couple of things to add there that usually

I'm no farmer, but the more wheat you have in a field, the less room there is for tears. And we know that by his parables talking about the return that he gets on his wheat and what that looks like to a hundred fold and Satan doth go out with a whimper as well at the end.

Um, and he, he has power. Yes. But it appears to not be very much in the face of what is to come.

And as far as the setup being optimistic, I would fall in there as well as post mill.

I went through a two year study on it and I found it to be the most coherent internally with the word.

Um, so that's just where I ended up after that long of reading and, and studying commentary, comparing the, the four views that I was thankful to read through all 670 some odd pages of.

So yeah, that's, that's where I'm at too with you guys. Um, I'm sure I differ in how it might look out cause that's kind of left up to the imagination, given that we're reading mostly metaphor when we're, we're given an understanding of how the kingdom grows and how large it grows as well.

Yeah. And honestly, again, I know there's a lot of fight. There's a lot of fights going on.

I truly believe though, when brothers can come together and recognize that Jesus Christ is at the right hand of the father and nothing else and no one else belongs there.

And there really is genuinely a great deal of agreement. Amen. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of love and a lot of unity.

And, uh, I remember when I first came here eight years ago, they were interviewing me about, you know, for the whole church about being pastor here.

You know, they asked me if I was a Calvinist. I refrained from saying, you know, I dragged my face in the gravel Calvinist. Um, but I said,

I said I was a gallonist and they said, well, you know, a lot of people here aren't. And, uh, how are you going to pastor those who aren't

Calvinist? And I said, well, you know, it's my job to And the reason why fights happen is because of a lot of reason why sometimes the fighting goes on is because of, because of pride.

You can put two humble people in the trunk of a car and they're going to make room for each other. You can put two prideful people working the night shift alone in the factory warehouse and they're going to find some way to fight, you know, and now there's a genuine fights that you have to have in order to defend the faith.

And we should never shy away from those that a paper above my door in my office, it says, uh, be of good comfort,

Mr. Ridley and play the man. There are fights that we do need to have, but sometimes the fights come because we try to put something else or someone else at the right hand of God.

If we put Israel up there or the Sabbath up there or covenant up there, or we try to put, um, family integrated up there or homeschool up there or, you know, any number of things, right?

I mean, and some of these things are good. Okay. But they don't belong to the right hand. And that's not, that should not be your hermeneutic of how you interpret your life, how you interpret the church, how you interpret the word on the one light of the world.

That's Christ. Amen. Well, I think that about wraps us up for today.

Um, we're going to go on to what are we thankful for Michael? I am thankful for coming up on eight years of being pastor here.

When I moved here, my children were very small. Can't believe the pictures I saw of them the other day, just little ones.

So when we moved here, the Lord has been good and faithful to preserve us and to prosper us here.

And, uh, I love this church. It is especially blessed by the Lord. His grace is evident and I'm just very thankful.

I get to pastor at this church with joy and I give the Lord credit for that. I spent the last two weeks in Denver at some very intense training and simulators and did not come away unscathed, needed a little, little reset, had to go back for some, go back for some more.

I had got a little bit of a breather, um, over the weekend, was able to come back and hang out with the family. It was a very, it was very refreshing time.

I mean, sometimes when you're, you know, especially as we travel so much, I go back and forth and back and forth and you know,

I'm home for two days. We tried to pack a whole bunch of stuff into those two days and I'm gone again. You know, this was, it wasn't like that.

It was a very refreshing, um, helpful time and then was able to go back and completed all the rest of the training and, um, did, did very well at it.

And I'm, I'm, I'm happy about that, but I think I did well because I had spent that time with Amy in particular and we just sort of came together on the same page and worked together through that.

And then I just returned in a very good mindset and I was thankful for that. And then of course they're, you know, off, uh, off in Arizona celebrating a circuit family member.

Um, while I'm, I'm here. So I get to, even though they're, they're gone, I get to accomplish a bunch of projects that they needed done.

And it is, uh, it just gave me room to do that. So even though they're not there, I can still serve them and thank them for those things.

So I'm very thankful for my family and the, the time of refreshing that I had in a very intense time.

And now I get a little bit, a little bit of time to thank them for that and do some stuff around the house that hopefully will help them.

I am thankful to God for like what we started with the, his word. I am very thankful that he has revealed himself and chiefly in his son and that he called me out of the darkness.

Amen. Well, I'm, I'm thankful for the concept of a Simper Raffer Monda and the role that meditation plays in that on God's word as you have so rightly been thankful for Andrew.

I realized that very little change can happen without deep consideration about what

God says about himself and myself. And that's the root of any reforming that I'm going to have. And I'm very thankful that we're given that tradition of reforming at all times, having that before our eyes instead of I've reformed to this point and that's enough.

Whereas that's not what we're told about how we're being conformed to Christ's image. So I'm thankful for Simper Raffer Monda.

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