Owen Doesnt Want to Take Sweden to Coffee - Part 2

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Owen Strachan's Confusing Perspective - Part 3

00:00

All right, everybody. Let's continue today with Mr. or should I say, Dr. Dr.

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Owen Strawn. We're going to continue right where we left off. But I will say that that woke preacher clips recommended that I do some content on the the movie, you know, the the anti -Christian nationalist

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Rob Reiner movie. That sounds interesting to me. You know, let me know what you think in the comments, if I should do some of that stuff as well.

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You know, maybe we won't do the, you know, the epic, you know, you know, 20 parter on on Owen Strawn's, you know, little little presentation here.

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We'll see. We'll see. But let's dive right into this and let's go. He's able to do that's great, but the business itself, like the political involvement, like the making a great movie, isn't technically the great commission.

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So making good laws, a Christian doing all the hard work and the heavy lifting to win office, let's say in the

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American context, filling public office, making good laws.

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That's fantastic. I am so for that. I adore and I'm not heating the pot too hot.

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I adore William Wilberforce or Kuiper. I don't mean everything about their program. I don't mean they would agree with me about everything.

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They wouldn't. But I'm saying their model, their example. I love it. I love it to the death.

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I want so many Wilberforces, but I don't want them to think that making a good law about,

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I don't know, about sex trafficking is itself the great commission. OK, it's very interesting because it's like,

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OK, like you want he wants to make a very technical distinction there. In fact, he called it technical, not technically the great commission.

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Right. If that's really all this is, it's just a technical thing.

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And he he truly adores, he adores William Wilberforce.

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And of course, it's easy to adore people who are dead because he doesn't really act like he adores it these days.

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Right. He doesn't adore Dusty Devers or maybe he does. Maybe he does. I think a lot of the support of Dusty Devers has been almost begrudgingly because Dusty Devers, you know, wrote a statement on Christian nationalism in support of it.

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And so, you know, it's like, OK, it's a technical argument. It's not technically the great commission.

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So then why do you need them to know? By the way, guys, because it seems so petty.

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Am I the only one that doesn't think this sounds petty? It's like, yes and amen. I adore your effort,

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Mr. Baker and Mr. Lawmaker. But I just want you to know, I just want you to know it's not technically the great.

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The only one doing the great commission work is me, my buddies. Like you're not.

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Yes and amen. Yes. But I'm the one doing the great commission. You're not accomplishing the great commission.

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I'm accomplishing the great commission. It just seems so petty. It's like, I just want you to know

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I support this, but the real important work is being done by me. It's very weird.

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It's a very strange thing, I think, and this is just an opinion. I have no idea about if this is true of Owen, but I have suspicions.

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I think that a lot of pastors out there, again, I love pastors, OK, a lot of pastors have an insecurity almost about their job.

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I really do think this. And they shouldn't. They shouldn't. Because they are working in a very important job and they are working for the

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Lord and they are doing very important things for people and they're it's just a very important job.

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But I think that there's an insecurity sometimes with a lot of pastors, because to be honest, they just don't get the headlines.

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You shouldn't need the headlines as a pastor because you've got the most tie, of course, but their job just doesn't.

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And but but but but business makers sometimes do get headlines and lawmakers sometimes do get headlines.

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And so, like, I think that some of this sort of I just want you to know, by the way, you're not doing the great what's the big freaking deal if he's not doing the

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Great Commission in creating an epic business, right, or creating amazing laws for our nation?

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Like even if you accept his paradigm where it's not technically the Great Commission, why does he just need to I need everybody to know?

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It's just very weird. It's very weird. I think there's a lot of insecurity with pastors that that should not be there.

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That should not be there. There's a lot of talk about how I don't need the accolades of men, but I got to be honest, a lot of the behavior betrays that they actually do desire that and seek that very much.

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And again, I love pastors. And so you don't need all that. You just don't need all that. You know, if nobody ever knows your name and you're a pastor, that's totally fine.

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I'll never forget this. This is a story I probably have told before where I was interning at a particular church with a big

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Eva kind of guy. He was the guy I was interning for. And I remember one time he told me like he was going to give me an opportunity to write for his blog or something like that.

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It was a blog or a newsletter. I can't remember exactly. And the way he presented it to me was like, so you can get your name out there.

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And I remember at the time I was like, I was just as nobody, you know, I just quit my job and get my name out there.

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Why do I want to get my name out there? You know what I mean? Like I just didn't compute for me. And it was just a very interesting way to put it.

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And I'm not saying there's anything wrong about getting your name out there. I'm not saying that, but it's just like, I don't know, you get my point.

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We're five minutes into this. I'm making one point. Let's go. So let me push back a little bit. So if you're looking at because I like the clarity aspect,

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I really I really appreciate like the clarity to the central message, all of that I'm with you on. But it's the it's the exigencies of teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded,

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I suppose. So if you were to look at what we're doing today. So, you know, you were gracious enough to come on a podcast that we do and there's nothing you know,

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I have no command to make a podcast, but we could look at scripture and say, I am commanded to observe all that Christ has commanded me.

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He's given me some parameters of life. And, you know, this is how we take all of scripture and apply it into the various aspects of life.

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So like I could make a God honoring podcast or I could make a probably sinful podcast if I handle it in the wrong manner.

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So if we were to take that and apply it to, for example, politics, if you were to teach them to observe all that Christ has commanded,

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I would think that would stretch into the exigencies of politics and probably even clearer because there's no specific biblical sphere of authority or command thereof to engage in podcasting or, you know, with Twitter or anything like that.

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But there's definitely a God ordained sphere of the state. So if we were to look at just kind of those big spheres, you know,

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I'm thinking like a very truncated Kuyperian model where at least you've got church, family and state spheres that you're recognizing.

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That would be a major area into which you're trying to push Christ's lordship. And I'm trying to make it broad because I think we could probably get into a whole lot of arguments with a lot of brothers over exactly how to do that.

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I'm just bringing up, is it not proper for us to say the overall approach is valid? Now let's work through the details.

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Yeah, that's a great it's a great way to put it. I mean, a lot of you in the comments yesterday were saying that Dr. Howard is awesome.

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And I've got to be honest, he certainly seems pretty awesome from what I'm hearing here. So well, well put.

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It's like, you know, teaching them to observe everything I've commanded. That's in the Great Commission, right?

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That's that is the Great Commission. And so, OK, fine. There's no biblical command about making a bakery.

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There's no biblical command about making a podcast. There's no biblical command about making a movie. But when it comes to the state, right, when this is very well said, when it comes to the state and civil governing authority, you know,

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Christ actually, you know, that's a sphere that's very clearly under Christ in the Bible. You know, there's a mandate there.

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Right. And he taught a lot about that. You know what I mean? The word of God says a lot about that.

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And so you would think that we would seek to say, OK, so he said all these things to Israel.

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We're not Israel, but what can we glean from this? What can we what can we learn from this? How can we take our own modern context and say,

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OK, we are going to be self -consciously Christian in our law as well. So we want to be self -consciously

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Christian in our culture, in our traditions and all that kind of thing, but also in our law, too. It doesn't exclude the law.

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In fact, there's a lot of words in the scriptures about the law. And so he's just saying, look, teaching them to observe everything.

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Well, you know, everything includes everything. Everything. You know what I mean? What do you say about that?

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Very well said. Very well said, Dr. Howard. Yeah. So. Part of what you're teaching them to observe is faithful discipleship and all that's different, correct, just teaching them, you know what it says, teaching it to observe, to do, to actual the actions it's teaching them to do it.

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Amateurs, including pressing the claims of Jesus Christ on your your faith and your work.

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So it is very good that a disciple be be hearing from a pastor that they should be serving

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Christ in their vocation. You think of John Venn and John Newton with the aforementioned

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William Wilberforce. They are absolutely crucial mentors to Wilberforce pastors who themselves were not politicians, but they were very much encouraging

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Wilberforce, lifting up his arms really in a Moses like way as he fought first the slave trade outlawed in 1807 and then slavery itself outlawed in the

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UK in 1833. I love everything about that system. I want all of it.

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I want way more pastors to do that. I want way fewer, neither left nor right.

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No politics even mentioned pastors. And I want way more convictional biblical worldview pastors encouraging saints in their flock to be salt and light.

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Matthew 5, 13 to 14 in the public square. I want all of that. I'm greedy for that.

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But I don't want the confusion of the Great Commission. The Great Commission is about disciple making.

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Those disciples will go out and be disciples. Do you see do you see what he's done here? So he even in that example, he just straight out says it right.

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The Great Commission is the two pastors holding up Wilberforce's arms like Moses, right, like they're there, they're they're giving him the support and Wilberforce is there, whatever, doing his thing, right?

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So the two pastors are accomplishing the Great Commission. Wilberforce is not in actually observing the commands.

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That's actually not fulfilling the Great Commission. But the teaching them to observe the commands is the

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Great Commission. If he wants to make some technical argument there, I'm fine with that.

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I'm fine with that. You know what I mean? I think he's being overly technical. But the point is, though, that if you're going to do that, then then would you stop the signaling against the

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Christian who's like, I'm a Christian disciple? And OK, maybe technically I'm not observing the

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Great Commission or whatever. I'm just observing the law. I'm not doing the Great Commission. I'm just observing the Great Commission. Maybe technically

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I'm not, but I'm doing it as a Christian. I'm doing this for the Lord. These are Christian laws that I want to do. I want to do

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Christian nation. I want to do all don't signal against that. As if it's not Christian. That would that would clear up all of this,

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I think. But instead, what we get is signaling against Christian nationalism and saying we're racist and ethnic ethnocentrics and Kenneth, that's what we've been getting from you,

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Owen, maybe this is a shift in your tone or not tone in your message. And if it's a shift in your message,

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Owen, then I'm very grateful for it. I adore that. I'm greedy for it,

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Owen. I'm greedy for it. But man, like.

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Someone in the comments said that this pastor pastor centric mindset is really just elitism, and that actually sounds right to me.

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It's just elitism. It's like I'm the elite. I'm doing the real heavy lifting, the really, truly gospel centered

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Christian work, and you are a disciple and yes and amen to it. But just remember, remember your place.

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You're just doing the other work. I'm doing the real work. It's like, man, dude, you got to get over yourself.

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You really do. But making law is not the same thing as making disciples.

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And what will here here's what I'm trying to guard against. You're trying to guard against thinking that you're fulfilling the

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Great Commission when you're not. And what will happen if you do that is you will. This is what happened 10, 15 years ago with the in the city.

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But here's what I'm trying to guard against people thinking they have to be pastors when they're not or thinking when they have to be teachers when they're not, because the

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Bible specifically warns against that kind of thing, says teachers will be judged more harshly with stricter judgment.

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I don't want people out there teaching, thinking I've got to go fulfill this Great Commission and the way to do it is to be like a pastor, essentially.

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I don't want people thinking that. That's that's what I'm trying to guard against. Listen to what he says here, because I actually think that Owen's pretty helpful here.

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Everything became the gospel. The gospel wasn't closely guarded.

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And that's not because we're legalists, legalistic prohibitionists, the gospel must be guarded.

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It's the power of God unto salvation. It has a specific work in the world. And so the gospel became about let me just choose an example, evangelizing, well, not even evangelizing, reaching the art community.

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So what did churches need to do? There's this movement 15 years ago. Every cool church was starting an art gallery.

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I'm not against starting an art gallery. You have freedom to do that. There's no mandate to do that, of course.

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But I just want people to understand that that's not that that having a, you know, an art hour at the local shop is not itself the

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Great Commission. There can be disciple making that happens through that. But that itself is not what is in view in the

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Great Commission. The Great Commission, by the way, let's dive into this, is not about baptizing nations.

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I'm not taking. We're going to stop there. He's going to get into a different topic here. He really likes this topic because he feels very confident here.

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Where are you? How are you going to take the Netherlands to coffee and baptize Netherlands anyway? That was actually very helpful, though, where the distinction in the guardrails he's trying to set up here.

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I think that that was actually pretty beneficial. And we should we should listen to that. Right. Because he's like, look, you know, the in the city for the city movement, you know, everything became the gospel.

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And so if you were truly gospel centered, you'd have made an art gallery. Right. You made an art gallery. And yeah, we want to guard against that.

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That's very helpful. Very helpful. But I think the thing is, though, that that if you're going to do this, this kind of art gallery, right, you should be doing it as a

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Christian. Right. And you should. So you should not be showcasing, you know, quite frankly, anti -Christian art.

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And it doesn't have to be like like the piss Christ kind of thing. Right. You know, you shouldn't be showcasing art that has a completely upside down worldview or, you know, there's always that one from Francis Schaeffer where there was that musician who just produced albums of noise.

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You know what I mean? Just of noise and chaotic noise. That's not art. That's not art. So you wouldn't showcase something like that.

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You'd actually showcase beautiful art. But the thing is, with law, though, again, I got to go back to Josh Howard's point where with law, though, you know,

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God, the principles of art, you know, they're not necessarily that detailed and laid out in the scripture.

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There's there's definitely some. And so we could we could draw from that. But the law, there's a lot to say about the law.

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It's an institution of God. It's it's something that is very specifically, very clearly laid out in scripture as something that is

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God's servant. It's God's servant. Right. So what we would want to do is we wouldn't want to deny the fact that you can set up a law system that makes it easier to accomplish the

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Great Commission, again, following his form here. Right. To to to to to make disciples.

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Right. People are very upset about cultural Christianity, but cultural Christianity up and against, you know, cultural

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Islam or cultural Judaism or something like that. Cultural Hinduism is actually it helps you to produce more

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Christian converts. It's not the gospel. It's not it's not the actual work that's being done, but it creates an environment where it makes it easy.

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And my story is very similar. You know, I grew up in a culturally Christian context. Right.

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But I wasn't a believer. The cultural the culturally Christian context did not make me a believer right away.

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But what ended up happening was that, you know, I made I made a mess of my life. I mean, it was a disaster. I was the prodigal son and all that kind of thing.

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And when I realized that I was a disaster and I was, you know, I reached the end of myself,

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I knew I needed help. And because I grew up in a culturally Christian environment, where did

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I go for help? I went to the church. I went to the church. If I was in a Muslim environment,

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I don't know what would have happened. I mean, God could save whoever he wants. He can save a Muslim in a Muslim context. Of course he can.

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But it just turns out that the way he typically does it is through families and Christian families and Christian environments and things like that.

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That's how it works. So, OK, he's making this technical distinction, but we should still, you know, be yes and amening all this stuff and we should still be seeking to create a

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Christian culture. I mean, we have a cultural mandate to, you know, God asked, told us to go forth and multiply and subdue the earth and and all of this have dominion over it.

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We should do that like Christians. Right. Because. Non -Christians also do that, but they don't do it the right way.

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You know what I mean? They're not they're not doing it to the glory of God. They're doing it for their own purposes, their own deities, their own demons.

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And so we have a cultural mandate to write anyway.

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Sweeten it out to coffee and decide. There it is. There's the first one I've got. I've got I've been promising you he's going to do this.

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Here we go through that. But that itself is not what is in view in the

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Great Commission. The Great Commission, by the way, let's dive into this is not about baptizing nations.

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I'm not taking Sweden out to coffee and discipling Sweden. So this is where he gets childish, as you can see.

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The Great Commission is not about baptizing nations. I'm not taking Sweden out to coffee and then discipling

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Sweden. I mean, what do you even say to that?

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What do you what do you even say to that? I'm not taking

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Sweden out to coffee. I'm going to let him continue and then we'll respond.

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I'm I'm called to make disciples from all nations. And then I'm called to baptize them.

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And the baptizing them is a different is different in the Greek. This is a total error that is being made exegetically all over the place.

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And it's a big consequential error. We're not baptizing nations or baptizing disciples from all nations.

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So that gets loaded into this as well. OK, so let me let me jump in.

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This is the thing. Nations are made up of people. So, of course, you're not taking

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Sweden out to coffee. And in and in Owen's weird universe where that is discipling, taking people to coffee, you would take people from the nation of Sweden out to coffee and you would disciple the people.

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Now, normal, normal people that don't have this weird pastor centric mindset where everything needs to be neat and tidy, just like in theology, normal people can understand that when we say we're discipling the nation, we're discipling the people that make up that nation.

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So it's not that there's this thing out there called Sweden and we get that thing and we take that thing out to coffee and we take and we we disciple that thing and then we baptize that thing.

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No, no. Nations are comprised of people. I mean, are we adults here or what? Are we adults here or what?

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Can we talk like adults? You know, later, Josh Howard's going to make a great point. And he doesn't press it too much, because, again,

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Josh is a very kind person and a very winsome person. Again, Josh, I'm not trying to insult you.

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If you watch my content, you know that I use winsome as an insult. In this case, I'm not using it as an insult. You're actually truly winsome.

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He makes a great point where he says, well, you know, in the Old Testament, we hear of nations repenting.

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We hear of nations repenting and changing and doing things like and we all kind of understand what that means.

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But now all of a sudden, oh, and you want to pretend like you don't understand what that means. Nations can honor

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God or reject God. Right. And we're not saying that there's this weird thing out there called

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Nineveh and it's separate from the people. And it's just a Nineveh decided that, well, you know what?

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We're going to we're going to we're going to we're going to honor God now. Nineveh is just this weird thing out there. We're going to honor

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God out there. That's not what we're saying. We're saying the people that comprise the nation of Nineveh decided to do that.

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Can we be adults here? And this is the face here, Josh Howard here. Again, I have never spoken to Josh, at least as far as I remember.

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This is the face of what? What is he talking about? Taking Sweden to coffee?

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And he's got his he's got his head on his neck and he's like. He's like, it's like a five year old.

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Like talking to a five year old, what are you talking about? You might if my if my eight year old said,

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Dad, Dad, how do you how do you how do you disciple Sweden? What is that supposed to mean? I talk to him normal because he's he's nine.

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This is a 40 something year old man. This is the face of complete.

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He's perplexed. I think I think he's perplexed or vexed or something. Just just a hair there, because because what you're getting into that, that that's a big that's a big one that we need to walk into.

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Just just one brief word toward what you had previously said before you jumped into the the baptizing, baptizing

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Sweden. I need to make a note of that. But I'm looking back. Did you see that smirk? The baptizing

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Sweden thing, he smirked, look at it, look at it. He's just perplexed.

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Every face he makes is perplexed. The baptizing, look at the smirk he says when he's. Big one that we need to walk into.

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Just just one brief word toward what you had previously said before you jumped into the the baptizing, baptizing

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Sweden. I need to make a note of that. But I need to make a note of that. Looking back toward the looking back toward that, you know, pushing if you're to think of like pushing

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Christ's crown rights into all of life. I think that's something that might be different. For example, if I do, you know, you brought up the baker.

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I'm still thinking in terms of just me doing a podcast or you doing a podcast. If I do a poor podcast, you know, I will suffer.

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God will chasten me and correct me. There's going to be, you know, things that that I'm liable for. But with the nation, you know, we're told that that God exalts the nation.

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And we're told that, you know, the nations bow before the king. We're told that the nations, you know, that they tend to rebel against the sun.

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Psalm two. And yet that they're called to to bow to the sun. So like we understand there is a number one, there is a duty of the nation to bow to Christ, but there's also a shared experience within the nation.

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So when we think of of national or, you know, you could think of the nation or the state with the capital S when we're thinking of the state, the governance in general, the people suffer when there is wickedness passed.

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So when evil laws are passed in our nation, Christians decry that. And rightly so, because God brings judgment on sinful nations.

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He's called them to obey by his law or abide by his law. And we can talk about natural law and all those exigencies.

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But there is some form in which when when man is unjust in the governance of their nation or or state that that we are that we are suffering before it.

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Now, conversely, you have the church, which is given, you know, Calvin famously called it the spectacles, you know, scripture being the spectacles through which we see life.

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So the church has given that special revelation to proclaim to the state. So I think what's strange sometimes, and this isn't an accusation, this is just me trying to walk into what some of us are trying to think through.

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It sounds like there's far more Christians that never apply the truth of scripture, which we are kind of safeguarded with in the church, have no interest in applying that to the state and yet bemoan the state of our

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I'm using those words confusingly, bemoan the condition of our current culture, right? We see sin, we see depravity and we see

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God's righteous judgment falling on those things. And yet there is a hesitancy to proclaim truth to the state.

26:17

Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. There's a lot there, of course. That's the phrase of the day, apparently on this podcast.

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Yeah, I'm back going both ways. I don't read Psalm two as being fulfilled by us.

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I read the nation's bowing to Christ as as what will happen eschatologically like a lot of passages.

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There's a lot of passages that are. This is kind of irrelevant because, well, it's relevant to Owen's positions here because he's pessimistic.

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But but it's the point, though, is that Psalm two talks about the nation's bowing.

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So is Sweden out here, this weird thing, entity called Sweden bowing to Christ?

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Or are we talking about the people in Sweden, the Swedish? This is actually and I'm going to end here because we've been at this for almost 30 minutes.

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So this is actually, in my opinion, the most helpful part of everybody talking about Christian nationalism.

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It's actually the nationalism part. You know what I mean? Because the Christian part, I think, is clear enough.

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The nation part, like what is a nation actually? You know what I mean? What what what is it is isn't is the

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United States a nation? John Harris has done some good work on this. You know, Stephen's book in this way is very, very helpful to think through some of these things, because these are things that we have not really thought through very often.

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What is a nation? That part is there's so much there.

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And there's and this is the part where I think probably Owen is the most in need of help.

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And so it's a shame that he just, you know, starts throwing pejoratives out there and calling everyone and their mother a kinness and a racist.

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That's a real shame, because this is where he needs to learn. It's as simple as that.

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This is where he needs help. So anyway, we're going to get more into that in a little bit, because we're going to talk more about that.

28:18

They do, in fact, a little bit in this in this video. So I hope you found this one helpful. It's just it's a shame that it has to be so childish at times.

28:27

It really does. You know, Owen is I'd like to think that he's smarter than this.

28:33

I really do. I really do. Psalm 2 talks about the nation's bowing. So we can talk about the nation's being discipled or the nation's being baptized without turning into an idiot and thinking, oh, hey, sweetie, you take sweetened coffee.

28:46

By the way, that was number one of like six times he talks about that. Let's go.