February 12, 2016 Show with Gregg Hodge on “Minding Your Faith: How Men Can Have Devotional Lives that Will Actually Affect Their Real Lives!”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 12th day of February 2016, and that's just two days away from my birthday for anyone interested in possibly sending me money or valuable gifts, so I just wanted to let you know that, and I'm very excited to have, for the very first time on my program today, due to the very strong and eager and enthusiastic recommendation of Mike Gaydosh of Solid Grand Christian Books, one of the sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron, I have with me

Greg Hodge of the band -slash -ministry Princeton Revival, and we are going to be discussing his brand -new book.

Actually, I'm not even sure if it's hot off the press yet, but it will be shortly. The book is called Minding Your Faith, How Men Can Have Devotional Lives That Will Actually Affect Their Real Lives, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Greg Hodge.

Chris, thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be with you. Looking forward to the next couple of hours, brother.

I am as well, and I am also excited that, for the very first time, I have sitting next to me a dear friend of mine.

He is John Busby Taylor, Reverend Buzz, as his friends call him, and since I'm his only friend,

I'm the only one who calls him that. Reverend John Busby Taylor is the co -host with me for the very first time, and he is a retired pastor, and I like to think of him as an eschatologist.

I don't know if anybody else has used that phrase before, but he seems to study a lot on different end times theories and so on.

He happens to be himself a post -millennialist, but welcome to Iron Sharpens Iron for the first time as my co -host,

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Thank you, Chris, and I hope everybody sends you chocolates since I am local with you.

I'm so glad that Buzz finally was paroled and can be my co -host today.

Before we return to Greg, who is our guest today, Buzz, why don't you tell our listeners something about, very briefly, and I mean that very sincerely and strongly, very briefly, your history as a pastor in the different denominations where you serve.

You've known me that long, huh? Very briefly, yes, yes.

I come from a, well, my ultimate background was close to nothing. I was raised in a denominational church that we stopped going to when

I was very young, and for years we didn't go anywhere. And then we heard the gospel through a

Baptist church in Tonawanda, New York. I'm from Buffalo originally, and from there

I've kind of been around the block. I graduated from a very fundamentalist university.

I was a Baptist pastor for about four years, an assistant pastor, and then

I spent some time going through the whole Pentecostal scene and charismatic, and I am today attending

Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church where I've been for about 15 years now.

That's a PCA church. A PCA church, when I moved to Carlisle, I started going there. And you included among the churches where you pastored were also the

Church of God, not the Cleveland, Tennessee. Right, the Finley, Ohio, the Church of God General Assembly, which they're actually larger in the

Harrisburg area here. Yeah, they seem to be everywhere, the Churches of God, and next to the

Brethren in Christ, I think it's the most popular denomination in this area. Probably, yeah. Well, Greg, tell us something about, before we go into your own personal testimony of how you came to Christ and how you arrived at where you are today theologically, tell us something about Princeton Revival.

Well, Princeton Revival is a men's ministry birthed out of, well, all of the tributaries in my life came together in this ministry, and it's a bunch of my friends that are great musicians, and they're all wonderful thinkers and have the gift of teaching.

We came together to form a ministry that would involve music and writing and teaching and downloadable resources, and we're about a year underway with that,

Chris. Ed, the formal mission statement of the band is that we exist to promote and facilitate maturity in Christian thinking and practice, and we're doing that through books, events, and downloadable resources.

So, that's what we're doing. We're excited about it. And I might as well give our email address right now.

If anybody listening would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And please include at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And so, by the way, I want to let our listeners know we will be sharing with you a couple of songs during this broadcast that Princeton Revival has recorded, so we hope you enjoy those songs that we will eventually get to.

Tell us something about your upbringing and how you eventually came to embrace

Christ as your Lord and Savior. Well, Buzz will be interested to know that nobody gives me heat for being a

Buffalo Bills fan, brother. I'm also a

Yankees fan. You get all the heat for that, of course, not recently. But somebody said to me a few years ago, oh, the

Bills. Boy, I love to lose Super Bowls. At any rate, we still pull for them anyway.

So I was raised in Syracuse, upstate New York. I moved to Nashville in 1988,

I believe it was. And between that time and I grew up in a home that was not a Christian home. It was a good family.

But I went to church occasionally. And so my father came to Christ. Interestingly enough, the

Spirit of God called him through Billy Graham's ministry. And so I was keen to hear

Billy Graham when I had my first opportunity. But my brother came to Christ after that, my older brother

Bruce, who's a graduate of RTS and friends with RSD. And then

I followed shortly after that. I was still in high school and went to college, dropped out of college.

And after I came home, kind of devastated, mostly for my own laziness, I started going to church with my dad and began growing in Christ.

At that time, I think I was nominally just a baby before that.

And so we went to a small Baptist church. And the youth pastor in that church brought me to a concert where I really just sensed the

Lord moving in me to not only deepen the relationship, but perhaps to use my gifts and music in that way.

So I went forward to the Dallas Home concert, which is interesting to come back to later.

But I met Dallas later in life. And I thought, I want to use my gifts from the

Lord in music, if you'd be pleased. And so I thought, Dallas Home is great, but we need some guitar.

We need some crank here. So I didn't realize that there were bands like Petra and the

Allies out there. But I soon came to realize that they were out there and was resonating with their ministries.

And so I got into Christian music, and I moved to Nashville. I met my bride down there.

And we went to Southern Seminary straight after we were married.

And I spent the next three and a half years matriculating through the diploma program, which converted to a master's after I got my undergraduate.

So it was a bit of an interesting and eclectic educational background. And for our listeners who are unfamiliar with Southern Seminary, the actual full name is

THE Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

And well -pronounced, brother. Louisville. I was preaching in Texas once, and a guy said, now,

Greg, you could have come down this way and done it right, but you're up there in Louisville. And so when

I came up to the pulpit, as you did, I said, well, brothers and sisters, I just want you to know that we do have other fine schools.

However, I graduated from THE Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And that must be very close to the country's most famous baseball bat factory, isn't it?

It is indeed. My favorite team has ordered much product from Louisville Sluggers.

It's a great area. We love being up there. I can only say, if you are considering deepening your walk with the

Lord through academic study, either at Boyce College or in graduate or terminal work, you would do well to visit that school and see if the

Lord will lead you there. It certainly is one of the finest institutions on the planet. And of course, the illustrious

Dr. Albert Moeller is the president there. He is indeed the president.

And I went there, Chris, the first year that Dr. Moeller was president.

And they were very interesting times with a wonderful return to doctrinal confession.

But the spirit of so much of what happened up there was just crazy wrong. I learned a lot about ministry and maintaining just an ironic warmth toward people that you disagree with, you know, and bomb threats and just crazy stuff going on.

You look at the transformation, and now that's just a place that has a lot of peace and community and really is flourishing.

So it's been fun to be able to say that I went there. It's been fun to see

God continue to bless that institution. Now, obviously, I can't let you quickly gloss over bomb threats.

Is this during the controversy where liberals were being expelled from the faculty there?

Yeah, it was indeed. And I had an interesting journey there.

There are so many incidents I can share. But basically, brother, there was so much angst and hurt going on that people lost track of charity.

A lot of them did. But I remember one episode where the hallways—this was after someone tried to slap

Dr. Moeller in, I think it was a chapel or a convocation, some service.

And someone held spit in his face. I mean, this is crazy, crazy, disrespectful stuff. And, you know, hurt and all this notwithstanding, it's just crazy for the public to see this or hear about this.

So there was a hallway to his office that was lined with students just protesting him.

And he stuck his head up the door and looked down both ways quickly and pulled his head in and got on the phone with Domino's and ordered pizzas for all of them.

It's just a way to respond.

But yeah, we were in, I think it was two different chapel services. One was Dr. Richard Land, who, if you recall, after Russell Moore took over, was head of the

Christian Liberties Peace from Nashville. And he came to speak—if you know

Dr. Land, I don't know if you're familiar with his ministry. I am vaguely, but I don't know him personally. Yeah, he, if you've ever heard him speak, he of course came to speak to the

Southern Baptists and to speak for the Southern Baptists on the theological moral issues of our day.

And, you know, great guy, obviously incredibly well -educated, and had a pretty strong voice to and for us.

So he came to speak at chapel, and we had to exit because there was a phone call about a bomb threat that apparently was serious.

Now, that was one occasion. There was another. But yeah, it was a total period of unrest. But I do remember

Dr. Mohler leaning over the pulpit in the chapel early in his ministry there with a

Bible that, you know, they say, this is a Bible that's worn out because it doesn't belong to somebody. It's not. And there he was.

There he was with that Bible, and he had just finished preaching of the doctrine of Scripture, and he leaned over the pulpit and said, look, this is

God's holy authoritative word. It is necessary.

We can understand it. He just went on, he just down -listed all the things, and he said, look, if you don't believe that, you're not going to like it here.

Let's pray. And he was firm, and there were difficult times, but I really praise the

Lord that now that place is in just a golden age, holding up the right stuff, and the spirit there is so generous, and it seems to have gone through that fiery trial victorious.

So, yep, it's a great, great place, great story. And were you already a believer in the doctrines of Sovereign Grace prior to going there, or did that come subsequent to your education at the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary? Prior to going, it was where I am right now with what to get you for your birthday.

There are options, I'm just not sure what they are, what's going to leave the best taste.

But I went in there, I guess as so many of us are along the way, you're not sure.

You look back and you say, oh, I was in our mini -mess. But I got there and began to have conversations with profs and read more deeply.

You don't want to be arrogant in people's faces, because most of us started a place where we don't know that.

And so I came to a place where my questioning was hard, and my spirit was agitated big time.

I do remember going in and talking to Dr. Mohler and saying, listen, I need to find out some things about Calvin's thoughts.

I'm really wrestling with this, and I find myself angry at I don't know that I want to believe this kind of a

God, and yet I have to submit to truth. So what does Calvin say?

Dr. Mohler is with usual wisdom, and he's very concise.

He sees the question and sees the answer that needs to be given, and he said, Greg, let's just talk about what the

Bible says. And we'll get to Calvin later, because we're only interested in Calvin to the degree that we think that he's declaring for us the truth of Scripture.

And in those conversations, he recommended a couple of books that I did, in fact, read. And by the end of that,

I had wrestled through, and the Spirit of God just showed me not only the truth of the doctrines of grace, but their beauty, their power.

When you get that humbled and you realize, even me, you start singing hymns, you know, can it be?

Can it be? I mean, if it's real, if it's real, this is crazy. And so the humbling effect of those doctrines, and then that plays in the ministry of the rest that you can have, believing in that kind of God, the confidence and the joy that emerges is obvious to you too,

I know. So a great experience. So glad I went there for a number of reasons, but that's one of them. The way

I worded that is, for me, that's when grace became amazing. Exactly. Yeah.

And for so many. So did I enjoy my time there?

Yes. I'll give you the answer that when I asked one of my friends if he'd be tuning in today, he said, does Calvin have five fingers?

Does that mean he's not listening? Because he had 10, didn't he? Well done, yeah.

Oh my. But in fact, my co -host here, Buzz, is living proof that reformed people do come out of Bob Jones University.

And he is one of many men in the ministry that started their education at Bob Jones University that had a history of anti -vehement anti -Calvinism.

And today it's not the case. In fact, I just saw Steve Pettit, the current president of Bob Jones University, preach at a conference along with great reformed men of God, like Dr.

Joel Beakey and Dr. Stephen Lawson, and my favorite preacher on the planet

Earth, Dr. Conrad M. Beyway of Caboata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, and some other men.

And Dr. Pettit, I don't know if he's a five -point Calvinist, but the message that he preached was surely one that reflected the reformed understanding of the

Ordo Salutis. But I didn't mean to interrupt you there, brother. So you are now at a place where you've come to love and believe and passionately proclaim the doctrines of sovereign grace.

And how did you get involved in Princeton Revival? And by the way,

I want to let our listeners know before either you or I forget to say it, you are actually a descendant of Charles Hodge of Princeton, from the 19th century

Princeton divines, right? Yeah, there's a cousin relationship there, and I tell people if they look at a portrait of Charles and then look at pictures of my son's face, they'll see clearly genetically that there's a strong connection there.

So it's very fun to have that history. I do have a couple of first editions, and my brother and I both found this out after the fact that, you know, when we were called to Christ, and both of us now in some form of ministry, and so it's very thrilling to have that kind of heritage.

I'm thinking, well, there's got to be something in my head, because with that kind of blood rolling around.

So yeah, I certainly resonate with the Princeton theology, as Dr.

Moeller referred to it when we were in school. And so as far as the connection there to the band,

I think, you know, it is a metaphor, it's a signal that our country has drifted away.

I mean, all of the old seminaries that were started to the glory of Christ, where the buildings were the buildings were, you know, constructed and prayed over and filled, populated with educators who would deposit proclaimers of the truth right into society.

And when you think of Princeton now, and I think it's actually maybe getting healthier again, but we've all seen the drift from original theological commitments, and so we need a revival of that,

I think. I'm, you know, of course not in all theological ways a fan of Richard Baxter, but one of the things

I love about Baxter, I think, is necessary again today, especially, you know, with the factions and the right.

We need to recall a spirit that can work together, you know, in maintaining distinctions and dominations, but let's please pull together on the gospel and have a revival, as it were, that rallies the gospel, that champions the gospel.

And Richard Baxter said that, and he said, what we need to get people into is the

Word of God, which he wrote, so that we would learn, so that we would love, so that we would then live it out.

And that's been lost because people aren't in the Word, and churches are not proclaiming the

Word because the pastors are not, you know, until recently I think there's some good indications of returning this, but I don't think pastors are being trained to think biblically, or to think is the whole issue, and that's because the academies have abandoned,

Christians have abandoned the academies, and so we need to return to proper thinking, which is going to come only through theology, and that proper thinking,

I think, needs to come back to universities and colleges, and then it will trickle down into congregations, and hopefully into the lives of people.

So Christian revival, for me, is a metaphor that, look, man, we're losing the country, and we are in dire need of a return to solid thinking, and that alone, of course, is not going to get us there, but you're not going to get far without it.

Right. I can't agree with you more, and I fear that we're on the verge of actually starting a whole new religion aside from Christianity.

I mean, you talk about, I mean, it's become in vogue to not talk about doctrine, and it's become a dirty word, and people pride themselves in ignorance because, well, they're all loving, and it doesn't cause any divisions if you don't talk about doctrine.

And the irony is that they all are talking doctrine. It's just bad.

Anytime that you're talking about something regarding the scriptures and what is in them, you're talking about doctrine, and it's either good doctrine, it's biblically faithful doctrine, or it's bad doctrine.

I was shocked because I did some work here locally with a radio station that had a doctrinal statement, and it was about as milked down as we could get it.

I mean, it was just basics about the inspiration of the scripture, the deity of Christ, and so forth. And even with that, we had complaints that, you know, we're being too divisive, we might alienate certain sections of the society because we take a stand on inspiration.

It's like, how much can you get rid of before you no longer even have Christianity? Yeah. Well, Dr.

Mohler has, and I forget, and this is sad,

I think we should all probably have it memorized, but he has a triage of doctrine. And it's a wonderful metaphor.

I had to go to the emergency room last year, and, you know, you go into the triage, and they kind of place you, you know,

I had a cut in the side of my hand, so I was not as important as the child that came in, you know, with a serious injury.

And I was more important than the inebriated guy who was complaining about hangnails or whatever he was.

So they place you in sequence based on your importance and the vitality, right, that's at stake.

So it was an interesting image for him to use, that there are doctrines where all doctrine is important.

But to pick up the phrase that Richard Baxter used, and of course

C .S. Lewis later picked it up in the book, is mere Christianity needs to be articulated.

And I think learn first. This is part of why I think my book is hopefully timely, as well as timeless, in what it contains.

But I think it's timely because men in modern, at least western, evangelical culture are so ignorant, and most of us are still learning how to think, just to process a sentence, you know.

People that have been to seminary, and I am no, you know, when you start mentioning names like Robbie and R .C.

Sproul and John MacArthur and Jerry Bridges, my goodness, I mean these are minds and men with experience that I can only hope to have a portion of.

But along the way you realize just the capacity to reason, it needs to be developed.

And I was reading last month Richard Baxter on the fact that we're asleep.

And it doesn't matter how smart you are, the strongest soldier is but a coward if he's asleep, and the most brilliant scientist is worthless if he's asleep, etc.

etc. And I just think most of us need to learn how to think. We're asleep. And the culture feels so much that thinking is just not, it's not even done much, really, right?

You know, so we've got a lot of catching up to do, and so the whole notion of minding your faith just begins with the word mind.

Let's begin to think about how we should use it, and that we should use it. Before we go to our first station break,

I am going to play a song by Princeton Revival called

Show Me, and I hope that you are all blessed by it. And this is by the group

Princeton Revival, as we said earlier, that our guest Greg Hodge is a member of, which is a ministry and apparently a recording group, a band.

And Greg has been penning music and lyrics for most of his life. He has enjoyed writing with and for Christian artists such as White Cross, Bob Halligan, Randy Thomas, Wes King, and Morgan Cryer.

Recently, Greg has had the joy of returning to writing, recording, and performing songs with his longtime friends and co -members of the

Nashville -based ministry Princeton Revival. And as I said, here is their song, Show Me, and we're going to be back after a few stations, well after a station break.

Cause I wanna see it, so won't you show me, more about myself and what true life means.

I wanna be it, so won't you show me, more about yourself and the truth of things.

Come on and show me, the treasure on this land.

I've gotta come, gonna take me west, mean straight at rest, free or sane.

So teach me, everything that I need to know.

I wanna see it, so won't you show me, more about myself and what true life means.

I wanna be it, so won't you show me, more about yourself and the truth of things.

Come on and show me, an even story, that'll throw me some hope, and I'll cling to the ending.

Read me a letter, with full body grace, and I'll savor every line, and live off the taste.

So I'm here waiting, and I wanna see it, so won't you show me, more about myself and what true life means.

I wanna be it, so won't you show me, more about yourself and the truth of things.

I wanna see it, won't you show me, more about myself and what true life means.

I wanna be it, so won't you show me, more about yourself and the truth of things.

Come on and show me. Well, as I said, that was

Show Me by Princeton Revival, and we're gonna be right back with Greg Hodge from Princeton Revival, right after these messages, so don't go away.

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This is Chris Arnzen. And if you just tuned us in for the first half hour and for the remaining 90 minutes, we are interviewing today our very new guest for the first time on this broadcast,

Greg Hodge. And he is with Princeton Revival, which is not only a ministry, but it is also a performing group, and they are recording artists.

And you've toured with some pretty well -known groups, haven't you? Well, all the guys in the band are definitely tenured, brother.

It's very fun. Bill and I are, we feel, I think the

Greek word is peon. We feel like peons. You know, if you like me,

I could run through a quick biography on the guys in the band. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Our bass player is

Matt Chapman, and Matt grew up in California and has played with a bunch of different Christian bands, but most notably the

Allies. We are older guys, right? So the younger kids may not recognize these names, but great music from the 70s and 80s.

And so Matthew toured the world with them and some other bands, and he's a great brother on bass.

The drummer, Aaron Smith, A -Train Smith. Aaron is 65 years old.

He looks like he's 40. He stays in amazing shape. Just a sweet brother. He's an elder at his church and has toured with Ray Charles, with The Temptation.

If you remember the song, Papa was a Rolling Stone. That's Aaron on the drums. He also makes claims to a very wonderful theologian, the

VeggieTales, played on the rest. Yeah, he's toured with Michael Smith, Michael W.

Smith. He's toured with 77, Charlie Peacock. The list is crazy. So to have him is a real honor.

Bill Randall is my longest friend, longest friendship standing.

I will say that my wife is my best friend, but I've known Bill since I was 19 years old, and Bill was 17.

Bill and I started a band called His Band. It's possible we used to play in Pennsylvania and New York quite a bit regionally.

This would have been in the 80s, and we opened up for Amy Grant and Krumbacher and Dash and the

Code and David Meese and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So we had a little bit of a following in upstate

New York and Pennsylvania. So maybe some of the listeners might remember His Band. We now refer to it affectionately as Was Band.

But Bill, we moved to Nashville, and Bill was a keyboardist, and he went on a tour with Rebecca St.

James. I don't know if you're familiar with her ministry. And of course, her brother's whole family's musical, but her brothers are now for King &

Country. And so Bill toured with Rebecca for years, and as his children became more a part of his life, he wanted to come off the road.

So he bailed out, but he's our keyboardist. The guitar player, Randy Thomas, is the guy that started out with a...

Randy is still a very dear friend. He moved to Fort Myers, Florida, and that's been prohibitive as far as trying to get him to...

Well, just to get him up to practice in Nashville. He just won't make that drive. But he's incredible.

He toured with Kaniya Twain. He's penned hit after hit for Dolly Parton for...

Well, he wrote the song Butterfly Kisses, if you remember that song. Oh, yeah, definitely. Anybody with a daughter is gonna know that song.

But beautiful brother -in -law, and also an elder at his church. He's a minister of music down at Fort Myers.

But he's always there as a friend. But we've invited a new guitarist named

Tim Calhoun, who's recently joined us. And Tim is the one recording the

EP that we're working on, the record that we're doing right now that'll be out, Lord willing, by March.

So Tim was a session player in New York City for years, and then moved down to Nashville.

He's toured with some country acts. And just, again, another great brother. What's fun is that all of us have teaching gaps.

And so I think it's pretty interesting to have a group that would come into the church and not only be able to play, because we certainly don't want to be known for just entertaining.

I think that what we do is entertaining, but we're not seeking to be boring. But the goal is for men to leave, thinking back, reflecting on that evening with the band and saying, that was the night that the

Spirit called me back to the Word. And hopefully they will get resources on how to do it, and not just feel the impulse to do it, but they'll leave with resources that can help practically to get them back into the

Word of God. And to have five guys in the band, all of whom teach, all of whom have a different testimony and story, all of whom have different particular personalities, that it's been amazing to see the

Spirit of God link up people in conversation that certainly have been foreordained by orchestrating fathers.

So we love what we do in that way, and it's far more than the music. The music is simply a prop for the conversations in the ministry.

Great, and we do have a listener from Lindenhurst, Long Island, CJ, who asked, it is always interesting to me that Christians should go into the public square and to different avenues where there are many unbelievers.

And my question to you is, as a band, is there ever a place that you believe that would be inappropriate for you to perform, not because you don't want to reach the lost, but because of the fact that you may be giving a public appearance of giving approval to the venue where you are performing?

That's a great question, CJ. As far as we are concerned, we love to step outside that line of just going straight into churches.

We love church ministry and being in a local church, but we also do enjoy the opportunities to go into places that are secular.

I think for me, what I would draw the line is, if I'm going into a place personally that brings my conscience under conviction, or that would tempt me into any activity that's going on there in a way that's sinful, right?

But there are probably some places a Christian should never be, and so we probably could all agree on some of those places.

There's always the person who's uncomfortable if it's not in the church door.

There's always that person who can't get past the confines of the church.

And I would point those persons to Scripture and say, look and see where we find Christ. Look and see that he just wasn't afraid to be around people that were behaving in ways that I guess we could say are openly sinful, but look in the mirror.

And so I hope that answers the question. There are places I wouldn't go, but I also would have a freedom and for us it's a sense of calling.

There are so many bands out there that cater to the church, which is great. We need that.

But we are hopefully a band that does that. We'd love to be in the local church. But there are not a lot of ministries out there, brothers and sisters, that we are seeing that are tapping into establishments where secular businessmen, and I'm not seeking to exclude women here.

Our demographic is men, most of whom are 40 and above. And so we get out there in places where they are business guys after work and not afraid to be there and certainly don't want to participate in anything that's sinful.

And we're not going to encourage them to be sinful either by being there, but we're going to for sure go to them and meet them in those places and with love share

Christ. And we want to thank our listener in Statesville, North Carolina, Betty from the

Anglican Orthodox Church, who is very interested in this topic and is spreading the word about this program today to others.

Thank you very much, Betty. And Buzz Taylor, my co -host, you are actually a part or have been a part of bands that are comprised not only of Christians and you perform in the public square.

Of course, the music obviously is relatively tame enough where you could do something like that, like old -fashioned kind of music, correct?

Like a classic. Well, yeah, I've been involved in various swing bands, jazz bands that played big band style.

It's been a lot of fun, but I've also been in Dixie bands that have played for weddings and you talk about free spirited music in those bands.

Wow. So I was right. You are a heretic. Yes, yes.

But of course, I'm limited in the type of bands that I am associated with because I don't play a rhythm instrument.

I play trumpet. So I have to go where the horns are. But I'm very jealous listening to what you guys are doing.

And it's like, wow, I'd love to be part of something like that. To Buzz, I'm sorry to interrupt.

I was going to throw in there before we get too far past the jazz comment, big band comment, but I was a big band drummer in high school and I love swing.

I was offered the opportunity a couple of years ago to purchase at a ridiculous price

Glenn Miller's piano. Oh my goodness. The songs that you're listening to are written on Glenn Miller's piano.

Hopefully there's a redeeming element in that. Wow, you own

Glenn Miller's piano. I do. It's in his California home. And boy, I certainly enjoy it because I grew up listening not only to big band in general, but my dad is a big

Miller fan. So I love that music. Oh yeah, I've played a lot of that.

But also even in that era, there were those that were considered more radical like Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson and all those.

That's kind of the area I gravitated for a number of years. That's all right.

I just wanted to ask you because as you are fully aware, Greg, music probably next to eschatology and probably also you might want to throw in there women in leadership.

Music, eschatology, and women in leadership are probably the three most divisive church -splitting, war -starting issues that the church is involved in.

And I guess a quick follow -up would be sign gifts and that kind of thing. But the music, as you know, can divide brothers.

Obviously, you believe that it is very appropriate and right to use more modern rhythms and melodies and use of the electric guitar and things like that.

Are there rhythms and melodies that you believe are inappropriate for Christian worship?

I even understand that there could be a division between a Christian artist who plays an instrument and plays music and listens to music, just like any

Christian might listen to music, that is not the type of music that would necessarily be preferred even by the artist as worship music.

I mean, I know talented musicians that believe in acapella worship only. They're exclusive acapellists and so on, even though they are gifted musicians.

But do you see a certain melody that would cross the line and a certain music style that would be inappropriate for worship?

Well, there are principles in Scripture that we have to turn to about the nature of worship, and I would want to separate the nature of worship and the music that would go along with worship.

Because, you know, for me, I'm sure you guys agree, I've listened to enough

Bishop Mark Dever to note that the worship is the word.

If we're going to emphasize, so music as worship for me would fall underneath that larger discussion of what is appropriate when the church is gathered for creating, maintaining a context in which the things of the

Lord can be pondered, celebrated, learned. And so you have exhortations from Paul about women in dress, that those are principles that were applied to a particular crowd, but the same principles apply today.

I don't want to go to church and see a woman who is dressing in a way that's distracting anyone from worship.

So that's an abiding principle for me. Now, some cultures, some of the, as we know, the gospel goes into all kinds of cultures.

I think your modern culture, there are some places where a certain beat or a certain melody is completely so foreign that they would find it hard to worship the

Lord, to place the truth of a lyric, the truth of Scripture on a lyric and a melody within that context.

And then you go down the street and there's another gospel -believing bunch, but they're totally free to use that.

And so for me, it becomes, if it's distracting in that context, is it an aid to the worship or not?

That would be one guiding principle for me. Then I would make a distinction between that which is worship and that which is entertainment.

Yes, thank you. You know, we are not a praise and worship band.

Now, and what I mean by that is we're not exclusively seeking to lead people into praise and worship in the

Genevan sense of the order of worship, right? So, because we're not, the songs are more contemplative.

I do think that there are several songs that we've done that can be used in a worship service.

One of the things that we do is, we're seeking to do is, find places where, look, my style of music may not be fitting for the church, but anybody who loves the theology that is represented and taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary would,

I hope, feel comfortable inviting me in to preach. And so our keyboard player,

Bill, who is also a classical flutist, amazing, his first year in New York State.

When we live there, he and I will go in and I'll preach the

Sunday services and we'll do a couple of unplugged versions of songs. We have a song that's on the record.

What you guys were listening to and were kind enough to play are demos that we've done. The record will have certainly more polished versions of these, but we've got two or three hymns that we do.

We've got a version of How Firm a Foundation that we play.

And we've got a couple of free ballads that we do that would be more than fitting for pretty much any church that I can think of, unless, of course, you're an a cappella church.

Then we just, what we do there in those cases, we just unplug Bill's power cable and play the piano.

So, but yeah, in large part, we're about entertaining people into thinking about their faith and about where they are with life.

I mean, we call a lot of our audience, we describe as second half. Most of the men that come and hear us are 40, 50, 60, 70 years old.

So this is the style of music they grew up with, many of them. And so to redeem that genre with lyrics that are so blatantly about Christ.

And again, if I may, I'm reminded of C .S.

Lewis' brief little article called Christianity in Literature. I think it's in his book,

The Seeing Eye. It's his collection of essays. Either that or God and the

Doc. I can't remember which one it's in. But anyway, I think it's The Seeing Eye, Christianity in Literature, in which he's asking what advantage does the

Christian have when writing, and how does one define good Christian literature? What is

Christian literature? And Lewis responds with some points that I think are valid as it applies to music.

And he says, well, first of all, what makes good literature, good Christian literature, that it's good literature? Yes. The second structure is accurate and attended to, that there's a flow of thought that's easy to follow.

There are illustrations that have impact. There's, you know, your logos, ethos, and pathos are all present in good writing.

And so what makes good Christian writing still starts out with good writing. And then the beauty and the power of Christian literature is that it carries the substance of the gospel.

And we see different genres in Scripture. There's narrative in the wisdom literature, the prophetic literature, et cetera.

All of those things have different conventions to them. It's not a straight, necessarily, not everything is a calling argument.

You do have beautiful literature in the poetry, beautiful literature.

And even the way in which the gospels tell the stories, it still does so.

And in effect, of course, the Scripture is the model for narrative genre.

So if you turn that to music, I think that we need to allow artists to move beyond songs that just sound like somebody, like Paul is standing up there singing, you know, editable heaping of syllogism, you know, does that make sense, right?

So I think we need to allow for the liberties of other genres of Scripture to come into play.

And so when you look at poetry, Hebrew poetry, as any poetry relies on imagery and metaphor to trigger my own imagination so that I identify with my own experiences.

And it stirs up in me emotions and thinking, remembrances, and then, of course, for the

Christian to tie those into Scripture or for the growing Christian or for the unbeliever to lead them into Scripture is all, for me, part of what makes a great song.

And so whether we're using that in the church or whether we're using that out at a park somewhere or a men's retreat somewhere where it's outside the church, oh, we try to bring men into that good music with a lyric that is calling them into some contemplation of Christ or some facet of Christ.

And some of those are deeper than others. If you think of the, I think

I gave you the lyric to show me. Essentially what that is,

Chris, it's a prayer for illumination. Hmm. And at some point, we should turn to the fact that when a band does a teaching concert, as we call it, we don't call it just a concert or whatever, we call it a teaching concert.

It's a narrative through the contents of Minding Your Faith, the book, because the book is trying to get you into the

Word of God. So one of the first songs that we do is

Show Me because you don't, and we talk about the fact you don't approach scripture without asking

God to give you illumination. And by the way, let's pick up right where we left off with illumination.

And it reminds me of Lydia, the Seller of Purple, whose heart need to be opened by God before she could understand what

Paul was teaching. But if you could just hold that thought, we're going to go to a station break.

Don't go away, we'll be right back. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?

Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the

London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect

Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.

Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV program entitled

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That's the Thriving story. Welcome back.

This is Chris Sarnes. And if you just tuned us in for the last hour and the full hour to come, we have as our guest

Greg Hodge of Princeton Revival, which is not only a musical group, but also a ministry.

And before we return to our discussion, not only of Princeton Revival, but also

Minding Your Faith, How Men Can Have Devotional Lives That Will Actually Affect Their Real Lives, a new book by Greg Hodge.

Before we go back to that discussion, now we're going to play one of the

Princeton Revival songs, Way Above It All. We hope that you are blessed. Ahead, misery and unanswered death

Until a flawless life Became a sacrifice

And he closed his eyes And released his breath

But he already knew

That hands don't have to be bound Yeah, bound

That he was gonna raise us out To heaven

Sin was canceled enough Death was conquered enough

And Satan crushed enough But someone who is way above it all

Way Christ is exalted

And gloriously exalted Above all things

Don't you know That your hands don't have to be bound

Not everyone can be So why don't you raise us out to heaven

You'll get your inner life enough

When you start reaching out For someone who is way above it all

Way above it all Way That was

Way Above It All by Puritan Revival. I'm Christopher Love, your DJ all night long here, playing your favorite reformed rhythms and Puritan tunes to get through the night.

The DJ was coming out of me. This is really going to your head. Well, when

I heard about the Puritan Christopher Love, I said to myself, that has got to become my

DJ name. Puritan Christopher Love, actually, he had a quote that I heard

Don Kistler bring up in a conference back in the early 2000s,

I believe it was. He was teaching on the Puritans at a conference at the church where I used to be a member of in New York.

And when he said this quote, it actually brought me to tears. He said, Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.

And that simple sentence brought me to tears in that church. And that has become my sign out slogan as everybody who has been listening to Iron Sharpens Iron since 2006.

That's how I sign off every day on the program. But for those of you who just tuned us in, we have

Greg Hodge, who is not only an author, but he is also a musician and songwriter and with the ministry and musical group

Princeton Revival. And in studio with me, co -hosting is my friend, Reverend Buzz Taylor.

And Buzz, before I forget, why don't you give our listeners your website for your

Bible study that you're involved in with Jim Harris and Dave Seitz. It's almost, we're all three under the same roof right now.

That's right, Harris is across the hall, right? Yeah, yeah. I hesitate to give it because it's so new.

We just started and it hasn't even been filled up yet. But yet I want you to know, yes, it's

BackPorchBible .com. BackPorchBible .com. Yeah, we're the

Back Porch Bible Institute because we like to sit on my back porch and talk about theology. And by the way,

Greg, I can call you Greg, right? Of course. That is his name. When you were mentioned -

I've been called a lot worse, brother. Yes, yes. When you have the name Buzz, you've heard it all. But you were mentioning earlier about C .S.

Lewis and I thought you were going to go a particular direction, but I think it was C .S. Lewis. So you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong.

But I believe he's the one that said, we don't need more of Christian things being done. But this is a terrible quote.

You mean a terrible misreading, misquoting? Misquoting, yes, yes. But the idea is still there.

But what we need to do is normal things with the Christian world in my view. And I'm not afraid to call my musical adventures concerts instead of worship services because I do believe in the concept of otherness when it comes to worship.

But yet everything I do is not a worship service, but God can still get glory.

To use an example, I've caught myself driving down the street before and some really good song will come on and I'll start raising my hand and I'm like, oh wait, this isn't

Christian, wait a minute. But simply because God has given such abilities to men, such talents to perform.

I'm going to give myself away here. But when I listen to some of the old Doc Severinsen recordings, that's trumpet the way

God intended. That's right. And he gets just as much glory whether the person's actually deliberately trying to give

God glory or not. Well, it reminds me what you just said. I don't know if you're familiar with the story of Martin Luther being approached by a cobbler who was asking

Luther, and I may be butchering the story too, but he... Welcome to the club. Something to the effect that he was asking

Luther, will I better serve God if I sell my cobbler business and take my wife and children overseas to become a missionary?

And Luther said to him, I suggest that as a cobbler, you make a good shoe and sell it at a fair price.

That was... Yes. But we were talking about illumination before we went to the break.

And if you could pick up to the teaching concerts and your discussion on illumination before we venture on into the discussion of your book.

Sure. Well, in the larger picture of what we do, each of the songs is placed and in fact was written with a certain telos in mind.

I was supposed to use that word at least once, right? But I'm sorry, even backing up to it,

Buzz, what you guys were just saying, that to use the term worship in its technical sense, that could signify the church gathered and hearing and responding in reverential acts to the manifestation of God through his word and his people, et cetera.

I think there's a use for me to use that term that way that we're all familiar with.

But you're so correct. You're so right and so relevant, I think, to point out all of life is worship.

You know, I remember Spurgeon saying, I'm going to go home and smoke a cigar to the glory of Christ tonight.

And I thought, well, isn't that bold? And his wife said, do it outside. But I do think that there's some people who just, you know, heaven won't be heaven unless there's a complaint box for them.

And I just resonate with that. I, you know, the goal is to edify, to build up and strengthen it.

What could be more strengthening than to go to a night out with men?

Or sometimes we just have men's events. Sometimes we do father, we have a father and son of that that we're doing.

But what could be more edifying? It's not about calling it a worship service, but, you know, maybe it's better to couch what we do under fellowship and witnessing.

And yet, are we not allowed to work? No, you can't worship, that's fellowship. Fellowshipping should involve some acknowledgement of the goodness and the greatness of God.

So you come out to a Princeton Revival show and you're going to be led through a series of thoughts that are encouraging you to get into the word of God.

And to me, if I happen to raise my hand along the way, because I love your

Severson illustration, Buzz, we have extended guitar solos, extended keyboard solos.

There's a drum solo. I mean, you know, Aaron is Mr. Motown. He plays, he says,

I practice every day because I love it. Yes. It's a gift from God. Let us glory in it.

My goodness, we certainly hear a lot. I go to worship service all the day long and I hear, oh, my own church per se.

But, you know, there's so many places where you can hear bad music. Let's do it well.

And when it's done well, we can worship the Lord through it. Indeed, the very premise, when you come to the concert, we're going to step you through the book.

And so we start out the concert with Be Thou My Vision. Love that song.

And then we stop in the third verse and we ask the pastor of the church or some leader present to read

Valley of Visions, the introductory poem, Valley of Vision.

And we, of course, encourage people to go to shout around Christian books and order that off the site.

But it's a beautiful poem. And we just said, look, we're here tonight to recognize that the broken, the contrite heart is the one that's full, et cetera.

And then we show a clip from Dr. Brad Green, who's a great theologian, writer, speaker, teacher at Union University, on the importance of mind.

So minding your faith, start out with mind. And then I distill down for folks as they're listening.

And this is all about a screen. And if we're in a restaurant somewhere, we've taken over the

ESPN game and we've plugged in our PowerPoint and what comes up on the screen is we're going to focus on a thesis of the book,

Minding Your Faith, which is this. And recalling Doc Severinsen, recalling anything like this, that we've been created to glorify

God through enjoyment. If the old catechisms are right, part of the way in which we,

I know there's a single and a double understanding of this. I tend to lean toward Piper on this and say that I like his articulation that we glorify

God through enjoyment, by enjoying him. That's our purpose. And you don't, point two, you can't fully enjoy

God to thereby glorify him. You can't enjoy him without getting specific knowledge. Yes.

The more that I know about golf, the more that I think there may be a possibility somehow, someday, some way that I might enjoy it.

And that's true of a relationship with my wife. The more specific the knowledge, the greater the potential of enjoyment.

And people do this with their hobbies. They do it with their portfolio.

Financially, they do it with their businesses, their education, but they fail to realize the most important thing you could ever learn about is

God. If you would go to him in his self -disclosure, Carl F .H. Henry, he's his own initiation.

He's disclosed himself to us. And so we need to get into scripture and pray for illumination that we would gain specific knowledge about God who has intentionally revealed himself to us in a scripturated word, and then preserve that, and then promises to illuminate us to it so that we can get the joy out of knowing him and communing with him, which is the whole purpose of all things.

So the process of gaining that knowledge is what I'm calling minding your faith. Mm -hmm. And so the songs lead you through the process of doing that during the concert.

So the concert is simply a trip through the table of contents of the book in which each of us speak on the notion of, so we've got a song called

Specificity, which talks about the joy of specific knowledge. Then we do Help Confirm a Foundation, which is talking about scripture as the source.

So this is what you mean by the concerts being a workshop? Is that what you mean? Well, we offer,

I mean, if you're gonna use business language, and of course, lots of people are gonna get a bit out of shape here, but if you use language that is familiar to the secular world, we're gonna use some of that language in a workshop.

We would, we'll be one of the ways in which you could book us. Okay. Right, so if you will, it's one of the events.

You can have me to speak on the book. You can have Bill and I come in and do worship and speak on the book. Then you can have the teaching concert, which is a one -night event that lasts two hours, hour 15 for the, if you will, the show, the teaching concert, and then 45 minutes of informal discussion with anybody in the band about the book.

The next step up, there's the workshop, which is we're trying to do this at college campuses where we have the show followed by Q &A, followed by a private section, say a 50 -minute session where you can go and talk about one of the four kinds of Bible studies that the book offers with one of the band members.

And then the conference is all of the band members talking about, you know, in different breakaway sessions, you rotate throughout a weekend and get all of the sessions on all the kinds of Bible studies.

And then we have a final thing that's more of just a full -on experience that we're really hoping the

Spirit of God will call people to a real commitment of the Word. So this is kind of a graduated way of getting us in there.

If you don't know who we are, you've never heard us, you can just ask me to come in and do a men's practice kind of thing. But by the time you get to workshop, we're moving through a teaching concert that is helping you understand the importance of glorifying

God through knowing Him, and that that knowledge is accessed only in Scripture. You know, it's appreciated in general revelation, but it's accessed only in special revelation.

And here's how we historically, theologians have studied. And so I articulate four,

I use P's just by way of alliteration, because I'm a Baptist and they have to have alliteration to help me.

Oh, I'm a lot ahead of you. So formally what I'm doing is I'm taking you through biblical, historical, systematic, and practical theology.

I'm trying to introduce, I'm trying to expose men in the business world who've never been to seminary to these concepts.

And so I'm offering, hey, let's spend a month doing what we call, for biblical hermeneutics,

I call it passages. Take a, how do I rightly understand a passage? And so there's a chapter on how to do that.

And then the next is, take a month and look at a person, rather a proposition. So this, I'm triggering systematic theology.

Here are the major teachings of Scripture. Here are the major teachings that answer what does the entire Bible teach about blank?

Whether that's revelation or God or mankind or Christ or the spirit of the church, the future.

And what you do is you spend a month with a part of that doctrine. I'm sorry, did I just use the word doctrine?

But, and I explain it. It's always, all we're talking about is teaching. What does the Bible teach or reveal or what is it that God is trying to say to us?

And so you spend a month with the question, why should I read the Bible? Why does that have authority over me?

Spend a whole month in it. Then you move on to the final PUH, or the third PUH, which is person. So here

I'm not talking about persons of the Bible. I'm talking about those who've gone before us. I'm talking about dead people. Take out

Athanasius. Take out Augustine. Take out Luther. Take out Calvin. Take out a number of any of the classic writers who have penned works for us that like older brothers can sit down with us or grandfathers can sit down with us with all their education, all their wisdom.

I mean, I know that today's modern seminary graduates, so many of them are just as educated as Jonathan Edwards. Ha ha.

But to read Edwards will lift you in a way that is beyond.

It's to make friends with some of the persons that have gone before us. And the song, Way Above It All, that you just played,

Chris, is a reflection, of course, as I know you guys have already picked up. It is a meditation on Christ exalted above all things.

You read, so we talk about that in the concert, and then that song illustrates the beauty and the power of that kind of Bible study, studying a person.

Then the last part of the show talks about practices. I mean, once you begin to develop a way of accurately discerning truth out of scripture and distilling it, you put those truths together in a mosaic called systematic theology of propositions, then you want to see those things come alive and defended and articulated in the lives of those who've gone before us.

But all of that should lead into our own lives of I want this to be my reality, Lord. I want to know you in this way.

I want you to crush sin in my life the way that you crushed in Augustine's life through the gospel of the power of Christ.

And so we sing songs that are related to that. So by the end of the concert, you've gotten the point that we glorify

God through knowing him, through enjoying him, and that we must know before we enjoy, and the enjoyment is highly intensified the greater our knowledge.

And then that knowledge can be accessed only in scripture, and we offer these four kinds of Bible studies that you might, for example, rotate through one a month.

And this gives you diversity, a comprehensive plan, one that you can personalize as well, but it doesn't allow you to stick to your favorite five pieces and live there.

You've got to learn all of scripture this way, and in a way that will broaden you and lead you into the practice of it, that so much of today's practical books, they've dispensed with the horse.

They've not just got the car before, but who cares about theology? Soldier on. And I love what we're trying to do, brothers, is get guys on the word and help them do so with the end being similar to what

Dallas Willard said. It's one of those things that you mentioned in your quote that you'll hold on to. One of the things that I hold on to over and over again is, he says, don't try to do the right thing.

Stop that. Stop trying to do the right thing. Instead, pray to Christ and seek to become the kind of person who naturally does the right thing.

Isn't that a beautiful distinction? Yeah. We do have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, could not the sum of the language you've been using, such as all of life is worship, be used wrongly to introduce man -centered and nonsensical things into a worship service?

After all, you might love to play ping pong, but playing ping pong during a worship service during the gathered assembly of the brothers and sisters in Christ would be ludicrous, would be man -centered, and would take the focus off the one who we are supposed to be worshiping, praying to, proclaiming, and giving our full attention to, the

Lord Jesus Christ himself. If you could comment on that or answer that. Greg?

Yeah, I'm not catching just the one essential question in there. The saying that using, or saying that all of life's activities are worship, as a

Christian anyway, some have used that in order to, you know, go 180 degrees against the regulative principle as re -reform people like to phrase it, where the only thing we do in a worship service amongst the formal gathering of the brethren, we're going against what scriptures specifically teach us to do, and then doing all kinds of things that some would, you know, as our listener would find nonsensical.

You could even go to the lengths of playing ping pong during a worship service if you could just, if you consider all of life.

Sure, yeah, I mean, I understand the question there. First of all, much of what we're doing is not, well, let me put it the other way, the only time that I would say that I'm acting in corporate worship is when

I'm there to speak, or when Bill is coming in with me and we play that.

Otherwise, what we're doing is a concert. And so I'd make that distinction. And of course, I certainly would agree with this brother that there are those,

I mean, you know, people abuse all kinds of stuff. So you've got to look to scripture. What do we find in scripture that seems to indicate these are the practices and the components of a worship service, you know, when the church is gathered.

And so we see, certainly I resonate with the commitment to word -centered worship.

And we're singing the word, we're praying the word, we're hearing the word taught and applied.

You know, I resonate with Mark Dever and John Piper. Those kinds of definitions about what should dominate the service is an expository sermon, wherein the point of the passage, you know, quoting

Mark, I think pretty closely, the point of the passage becomes the point of the sermon applied. Whether that sermon is based on a single verse or an entire chapter, no matter how long, it's to the point of the passage applied is the point of the sermon.

And Piper's called it expository exaltation, right? So those things we see historically as the centerpiece of the worship service,

I don't see anywhere where ping pong is being played. And to me, for me,

I would turn the question around and say, what does it look like when you see a person who is living and doing all things for the glory of Christ?

We certainly have that and other verses which seem to indicate that all of life, the sum of life should be worship and to live for the glory of God.

That if we don't, if you can't play ping pong to the glory of Christ, don't do it. So I think that I would make the distinction again between what's happening in the worship service.

Let's clearly look for precedent in scripture and principles that would guide us and of course guard us from something that is placing too much emphasis on man.

And yet again, remember scripture says our primary purpose is that we would bring

God glory through our enjoyment of him. If you would block me from enjoying him altogether, then

I can't respond to those verses. And there are, of course, anyone who will drive a truck through that and say, well,

I'm glorifying God by my indulgence or my excess or by placing myself at the center of the universe.

I think that's a principle that everyone would get. And obviously, there has to be a difference, obviously also to be made between truly enjoying

God as the shorter catechism asked in the question about the chief end of man to glorify

God and to enjoy him forever. There's a difference between Yeah, that's a great point, Chris.

There's a difference between enjoying God and enjoying something that we like as a hobby or as a peculiar thing that we do and trying to put a

Christian veneer on it. I think we have a problem of a little bit of problem of definition here too, because when somebody says that all of life is worship, if by that they mean, you know,

I'm a Christian 24 seven, not just Sunday morning, which, you know, that's true. And everything we do is to be to the glory of God, even playing ping pong, you know, trumpet, whatever.

But on the other hand, I do see a principle in scripture that there is a difference between the sacred and the secular.

And for example, you have in the Old Testament in their worship, you had elements that were we were specifically told like their perfume and their incense.

You are not to use this in your home. You know, you want, you weren't to go to church and say, hmm, that smells really nice.

I'd like that recipe. I'm going to burn that at home. And even the perfumes and things that were used. In other words, like I think an analogy could be there is nothing most people

I'm sure would agree. Most Christians anyway would agree there's nothing sinful about a

Christian at a carnival being involved in a pie eating contest. But to do that at the Lord's table would be blasphemous.

And in fact, we're going to our final break right now. And this is the last time we'll have to interrupt our discussion.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Greg Hodge of Princeton Revival and my co -host Reverend Buzz Taylor.

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Minding Your Faith, How Men Can Be Devotional, Can Have Devotional Lives That Will Actually Affect Their Real Lives, by our guest,

Greg Hodge. In studio with me as my co -host today is Reverend Buzz Taylor.

And you have a statement of faith for Princeton Revival. Perhaps you could, for those of our listeners who just tuned in late, perhaps you could go over the main points of that and then we'll go, we'll delve more specifically into the book for the rest of the program.

Sure, but while people are going to be familiar, I think with that, we're going to be consistent with the older confessions.

And I think people, that's one, brother,

I could go for an hour, which we certainly don't have time for. I just want to point people to them and note that the historic creeds and confessions are something we're going to resonate with.

We do confess in there the doctrines of grace. We're happy to be conversant with people who are not.

I mean, I'm just not, for me, that's part of the fun is to get out there and be playing at places where people are either totally unbelievers or they're somewhere in the process with having either been exposed to or engaging in doctrines of grace.

So beyond that, I don't know what you want me to say. I meant your mission statement, actually, is what I was referring to.

Oh, our mission statement. Yeah, I'm sorry. Oh, great, great. Oh, you just gave me a great relief.

I was stressed with that. I get back to my library and crack open all my molar notes.

They already said it pretty well there in the creed. So our personal mission statement is that we exist to promote and facilitate maturity in Christian thinking and practice.

And we're doing that through books and through events and through downloadable resources.

And so you can ask me to double click on any of that. And your book, your new book that is coming out, is it going to be the first of a series,

God willing, of course, of four books. Minding Your Faith is the one we are discussing today.

Men Worth Following is the hoped -for segue or sequel to that.

And then you have Statement of Faith and Holy Communion. If you could go through a description of each of those.

Sure. I'm happy to report that Minding Your Faith is even now available on Solid Ground Christian Books website.

Oh, great. You can purchase it also at amazon .com. You also could get it, a great way to get it is at a men's breakfast where Greg is speaking.

We do offer it for $10 when the band is playing or when I'm speaking. So if you go to Amazon and I'm coming in town soon, don't buy on Amazon.

But that's out. It's been out since April. So I apologize for saying it's not hot off the press.

It is already off the press. Yeah, no worries. We are, what you might have heard from Mike is that we're in the second printing now.

So we're very, very excited about that. So that will be hot off the press here in a couple of weeks.

Very excited about that. So that, it is the first in four, as you say, Lord willing.

And there's a progression to them, Chris. If we get men in the word of God and responding to it, deepening their enjoyment of the

Lord by knowing him, then it's going to produce a certain kind of life.

And that's the second book. The second book is an unpacking of a purpose statement that I wrote, basically trying to answer the question with my wife, who do we want our son to become?

And what kind of man do we want our daughters to look for? And what do we want dad and husband to look like?

You know, we live in a culture where, and I was picked on some of this too.

My dad grew up in a time when it was far more saturated with a Christian worldview and there were plenty of Christian examples out there of strong men who were believers.

You know, and notwithstanding bad examples of that, but the culture was saturated with a

Christian worldview of the stories, the films, the arts, the business, culture, you know, you can pray in school, etc.,

etc. And we're now in a time period where that's no longer the case.

And so boys don't have a vision. What does it look like to be a man? And so we find them sitting on couches playing video games for hours upon hours without any purpose.

And we're floating from job to job because we're figuring out who we are. And it's devastating to the church and to the culture.

So I sat down and started reading a bunch of books. And of course, the better pieces of Richard Baxter informed this.

And you've got just all kinds of examples in the reading of Dead Theologians, right? But looking for the answer to what is a vision for me?

What should I pray for? And so I came up with a 15 -clause phrase that's a purpose statement for Christian men.

And I began to teach that to my son and some of his friends over a period of a year. And then, you know, per books like Raising a

Modern Day Knight, per books like that, we had a ceremony for him in which we spiked that learning with a ceremony where some friends, my closest circle of friends and my father, his grandfather, both of his grandfathers, and his uncle each wrote him a letter inviting him to be a man worth following.

And they signed this statement that I'd written. And then we asked him, and I said to him,

I made it clear, look, if you begin to get into the word of God, because we've given him a Bible that the elders pray over him.

So if you get into the word of God, what we don't want you to do is try legalistically to soldier on and try to become that.

What we're asking is that you would begin a journey of praying that the Lord would, if you open yourself up to the means of grace, that you would open yourself up to the

Spirit's work in you. And it would begin, your life will begin to manifest these traits. That's what we're asking you to do.

And so he signed it. We gave him a medallion and we prayed over him. And it was one of the most significant moments of my life.

And I think for my son as well, he still speaks of that and the chicken wings that we had just before that.

So that became, I think, the thesis for the second book in which I'm going to try to unpack what does it look like to be a man worth following?

And the third book, then, Statement of Faith, that's outlined to take us through those major doctrines that are the fuel of that kind of life.

You don't do it alone. You don't do it without grace. You don't love your wife and love your kids and conquer sin, mortify the sin in you and pursue the

Lord with joy without certain teachings burning in your soul. Legalism does nothing against the flesh at all.

And so we need to be lit up with the glory of Christ, studying Christ, focusing on Christ, the work of Christ.

So that is overwhelming. And there's so many words out there on this. I don't need to say anything.

You guys, I'm sure, have people talking about it all the time. There's so many words that speak of the overwhelming power of grace to eradicate sin and not just get rid of the sin.

You know, sin management is a huge piece of it. But again, the

Hebrew word shu means to return or to turn toward God, to repent.

So we tell people to get rid of the sin in their life and become somebody worth following and do it on this kind of fuel. But we need to remember that you shouldn't stop begging people to stop their sin.

Start begging people to throw themselves at Christ. And when you shu, when you turn toward God, by the very act of that, you're turning your back on sin.

But the emphasis is on turning toward God, humbling yourself with love, and finding your joy in it. And you don't do that without certain doctrines rising in your soul.

So that's the third book. And then the last book is that we live in an age, in a country, in a culture, individualism way.

And it's me, my, you know, I have my own, you know, I can tell

Siri to call me anything I want to because it's all about me. And to our brother's good point about turning things toward man -centeredness, you know, men are important because God made them so.

But we're hardly the center of the universe. You know, we are telescopes or the lenses, you know,

John Piper, we're lenses that are telescopic lenses, not microscopic lenses.

We don't take something small and try to magnify God up. We take a God who is so transcendent and beyond us and eternal.

And our lives should be a lens, like a telescope, that brings something far away into view for someone else, right?

And so it's not about us, it's about Him. But the final book is, basically,

I'm trying to take John Owen, Volume 2, namely on communion.

And say, your life is about communion with God. And we need to understand who is this

God of Scripture? Who is the triune God of Scripture? And how is it that we commune with Him?

How is it that He's made it possible for us to commune with Him? Because it's not just my life on fire that matters.

I want to get in the Word. I want to become a certain kind of man. I want to become that man living on the fuel of the right kind of doctrine.

But the reason I'm existing is so I can commune with a holy God, and we don't do that alone.

We're not going to get to heaven and sing karaoke. It's a chorus. It's a people.

It's a body. It's never individualistic. And so I'm an individual, but I'm coming into communion with God, and I do that in communion with others.

And I'll do so forever, in eternity. So that final book is about what does it look like as long as the

Lord carries? What does it look like for us to be doing transformational work, participating with God in this world, to exalt

His name, and to bring Him glory as we commune with Him and with each other? You know, I've spoken in the past and even interviewed people that before coming to Christ were involved in either

Islam or the Nation of Islam cult. And one of the things that drew specifically some of the black men that I have spoken with into that cult is that they were raised in the church, which was very matriarchal, and there was no real evidence of male strength and leadership.

And could that be said, basically, even beyond the boundaries of the

African -American church at large, but modern evangelicalism, has modern evangelicalism become feminized, in your opinion?

Absolutely, brother. I mean, I can almost feel the lift coming on right now as I'm speaking.

You know, I want to be the kind of man that, you know, for most of us, you start saying these words, you're immediately humbled by our staggeringly sad attempts.

But you want to be the kind of guy, the kind of man that your wife respects, that you earn her love, you earn her trust.

You know, those are stuff that's, especially in our culture, you know, you find somebody who's been married for a couple of decades or beyond, where the husband is viewed as a strong yet loving servant.

It's hard to find. It certainly is hard to become. And you don't do it without the grace of God. And I think this is why men need each other.

We need small groups. We need to pray together, encourage each other, and we get together to watch football games, which, nothing against that.

I think it's wiser to watch a baseball game. But, you know, we do have a harder time,

I think, getting together as men and breaking the Word of God in ways that matter. The women, historically, are so good at relationship and sharing.

That they get together and do this with much greater success, often, than men in our culture are able to do.

And, you know, I kind of envy that. I don't envy scripture tea bags, but I envy that ability to get together and congregate and break the

Word of God. So that's part of our mission. I've had a few women criticize us.

We hear this, that, you know, what about the women?

You know, you guys are in men's ministry. I mean, there's part of me that just wants to say, seriously? But I think most

Christian women would be happy to have their husbands getting together without them to learn how to better love the

Lord. And as you learn to love the Lord, you're going to be confronted, as we were in my own study, that I've had going on with a bunch of precious guys in my life.

We just spent a couple of weeks being humbled by the truths of Ephesians 5, for example, where you're supposed to have sacrificial, sanctifying, caring, and unbreakable love.

But wow, it's easy to teach that, friends. And it's a very different thing to see that as the characteristic of your life.

So I do think that the Church, not only are we playing into what is obviously a satanic ploy, because obviously the state wants it.

He wants the reverse of gender. He wants the neutralization of gender.

So we don't have words like mom and dad anymore. We just have parents. We don't have husband and wife.

We just have spouse, which those terms in themselves are fine. But let's make sure that they are signaling someone that particularly every spouse is either a husband or a wife.

And there's a complementary role that's defined in Scripture and needs to be lived out. And the same with every role of a man.

He's not just a spouse, he's a husband. He's not just a parent, he's a father. And then he's a son to somebody.

And he's honoring the parent or their memory. And then he's in a vocation somewhere where he is to manifest a life that is able to publish the gospel and make

Christ and his ways known as he lives his life in the public realm. So yeah, I think the

Church is in want of that and needs to get back to a clear vision.

That's part of what, in some small way, Lord willing, we're trying to do. And wouldn't you say that the way that we proclaim the blood of Christ in public, especially to a lost audience, can be often a clear example of whether or not we are demonstrating true

Christian manhood and whether or not we are acting in an effeminate way theologically.

Like a perfect contrast to me would be the difference between what John MacArthur says from his pulpit and when he's on talk shows being interviewed about the gospel as compared to Joel Osteen, where Joel Osteen is just sitting there with a big smile on his face.

And when he's asked a tough question about the never -dying souls of those who are not

Christian, he's like, well, I don't really know about that. And I'd rather not focus on that. Whereas John MacArthur, on the other hand, would be clearly demonstrating that without a faith in Christ, you are going to be damned for eternity.

But isn't that an example of biblical manhood in contrast to a feminized approach to evangelism?

Sure. I mean, there are a number of problems with men. Most of them can't think. And when they do think, they're not thinking in a way that is honoring the gift of reason or logic.

So they can't articulate belief because they don't believe and they don't know what they believe.

And so you end up talking in emotive language. And so I think that's part of it.

It's not just feminization. It's a utter want of the ability to articulate with words.

And so I'm trying to remember the name of the book, but it's from Boys to Manhood.

It's a book that Southern Seminary has put out. And if you go to Al Mohler's website, he has a thing on, you know, when boys become men, there are 13 chapters in there.

And one of them deals with this very issue. A man knows how to speak and communicate in ways that are gracious and loving.

We don't have to be jerks. I mean, the truth and love. And you're also, you know, when I'm at a certain event, like on a radio show, and I'm not in the worship service, let's just say that, they're differing relationships with differing levels of maturity, both in the personality and both in their faith journey, wherever they might be.

And so I have to accommodate that. And that's part of what Joel is trying to do. But you're right.

I mean, when it comes down to asking the pointed question, we need mannish answers that can concisely and lovingly proclaim

Christ with a clarity that opens them up to the grand opportunity of knowing

God and loving Him, serving Him. And aren't we supposed to fear God infinitely more than we fear men and their opinion of us?

And aren't we also supposed to be far more concerned over the souls of men than hurting their feelings?

Well, indeed. I mean, as the cancer patient who, you know, you're going to, if you're a true surgeon, you're going to bring out a knife.

But I do think there's, you know, another phrase I throw in there is I think the mature man, the maturing

Christian, has more of a positive agenda than a negative one. And I just meet so many people, I just, we can't do anything but talk about what's wrong.

And I just don't want to parse everything to the left negative integers. And I would so much rather parse about, you know, what does it look like when we are worshiping

God in our church services? Let's highlight that. Think on that. Let's leave with a taste that's positive.

And I'm not saying we don't criticize. I'm just saying, guys, I talk to so many people who just, they're not happy.

I mean, they could find, they could find a cow patty in the Lord of the Rings shire. You know what

I'm saying? And I want to say that a Christian man, the one who's growing,

I'm not saying a compliment in any way, shape, or form, but you have a conversation with someone that highlights this.

You know, D. Martin Lloyd -Jones has a book that Mark Dever gave to me called Spiritual Depression. And really the book should have been titled

How to Have Christian Joy because he articulates that's what the book is about, for sure. He says that one of the reasons that men are not as effective as Christians in today's culture, if that was true for him or much more for us, is that we all, we're negative, we're critical, we're sad, we can't find joy in Christ.

And so we're not doing any favors. And I'm sorry, Greg, we're out of time.

We're going to have to have you back very soon. And I know that your website is PrincetonRevival .com. Solid Ground Christian Books is at Solid Ground, Solid -Ground -Books .com,

Solid -Ground -Books .com. And we just hope that everybody remembers for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.