Theological and Doxological with Dr. Stephen Yuille

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Teddy Jaynes, a content producer for Mediagratia. And this week,

I have been in Granbury, Texas at Fairview Covenant Church with Dr.

Stephen Yule. So if you're a longtime listener or viewer of the podcast, you've met Dr. Yule before.

We had him on several weeks ago. John was in the studio talking with him. But I thought that since we just finished up a study, it would be good for the two of us to sit down and to have a little conversation.

So, Dr. Yule, I really appreciate your time, not just for the study, but also taking time to do this. Oh, my pleasure.

I'm glad it worked out. So let's start. You are a Canadian from around the

Toronto area. And we are in not Canada. God's country,

Texas. It's much warmer here. Yes. So tell us, how does a Canadian get to Texas?

Because that's a long way. Yeah, that's quite the story. I better keep it brief. The year was 2008, and I was pastoring part -time in Ontario and lecturing part -time at Toronto Baptist Seminary and recognized that I needed a full -time position, ministry opportunity, and just started to pay attention, look around.

And there was a church here in Texas that put out a call through a magazine, a periodical that came by way of email.

And almost on a whim, I sent in my resume and had a call back a month or two later.

And within a few months, we had moved down. And we knew absolutely nothing about Texas.

I mean, we... Other than everything's bigger. Everything's bigger. We had never been to Texas.

I could not have told you three facts about Texas in my life. I depended upon it, but yeah, we love it.

And now you're a seminary professor. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, correct?

Church history, right? Church history and spiritual formation. Biblical spirituality, there are different designations for that entire discipline.

So we were introduced to you through a couple of books that you've written. And one of the things that I would love to bring up is

George Swinnick's The Blessed and Boundless God, because you edited that book, updating the language, making it a little bit more approachable.

I do want to encourage anybody who's listening or watching this, do yourself a favor and go buy that book.

I've been working slowly through it. The chapters are, I mean, they're not devotional chapters, but I would consider them devotional -lengthy.

They're five, maybe ten minutes. And just so much meat there, you could chew on it all day long and still savor every bit of it.

I think it's one of the best books out there. I would agree. And I haven't read that many books, but of all the books that I've read, it has become, the best way

I can say it, it has become a constant, close friend that draws me to Christ.

Yeah, and it's the combination of deep theology and yet doxology.

So it's not, oftentimes when we pick up a work on systematic theology, theology proper, you know,

I know it can be a bit cerebral and even abstract. But we're going back in time, pre -Enlightenment period, dealing with an author who lived in a different, obviously a very different context and era.

And that's how they did theology. I mean, they were convinced that theology is the science of living blessedly forever.

And so theology is always doxological. And it is so apparent when you read it and it just resonates in the soul.

Yeah. And so put us, help us get a category for that book. It's basically the attributes of God, right?

It is the attributes of God. It is. I think the title is the key, the blessed and boundless God.

Although George Swinnick, if he were alive today, he might take issue with me because I changed the title. His title was the incomparableness of God.

So God is beyond compare. And then what he does is he walks through the attributes of God, the works of God, the words of God to demonstrate how

God is incomparable. But I thought blessed and boundless really captured the essence of the book because that's the twofold emphasis throughout that God is blessed forever.

He is the only and blessed sovereign and all sufficient God who delights in himself and now joyfully, willingly, graciously imparts his blessedness to us.

And he is a boundless God and is more than sufficient to satisfy our every need.

And this is what I think comes through in every chapter, on every page and every line. And it is wonderfully encouraging.

And it is such a sweet, sweet book. So again, we'll put a link to that down in the show notes.

And it's very nice not having to kind of try to communicate to John, who's usually the host, to tell people to look in the show notes.

I get to do it. So look in the show notes. We'll make sure there's a link to the blessed and boundless God. But the reason that we're here this week is because you just finished filming a study for us on the book of Galatians.

So let's start with this. Good job, by the way. Good job. I hope so. I will say this. I hope that the production value matches the content, because the teaching is absolutely phenomenal.

I was blessed in filming it and can't wait to go back and edit it. So tell me this.

When we contacted you and asked you to do a study for us, your immediate response was,

I want to do Galatians. Why? Part of that was very pragmatic. I had studied it recently, so it was fresh and I had gleaned so much from it.

Again, I often talk about Paul's theological precision. It's right there in the book and his pastoral fervor.

And this is just these dual emphasis excellence in the book.

And so part of it was pragmatic. I had studied it. I had preached through it. I had written on it.

And so it was fresh. Now, on top of that, and even more importantly,

I was convinced that this is a book that is timely. This is a book that the message of which we need to hear.

Paul really stresses the soul sufficiency of Christ. We can word that slightly different terms.

Christ is an all sufficient savior. Or if you think of the old Reformation, Christ, Solus Christus, Christ alone.

And we need that as the people of God. The church needs to hear that in every age, every era.

And we especially need to hear it in our day. There are lots of challenges. I mean, you can come at it from a couple of different angles, plenty of challenges, ideas that undermine

Christ's sufficiency. And you can also think of it not just apologetically or polemically, but pastorally.

What greater need is there? What greater need do we have than a greater vision and appreciation of the

Lord Jesus? So when I thought of a series, yeah, I want to do that.

Galatians just leapt off the page. And that was a big part of the reason.

This is a book for this hour, this moment that I think God will really use in people's lives.

So before we started recording and after we had finished the study, you know, you and I had a conversation.

I'd like to kind of rehash here because the book of Galatians is such a pivotal book where Paul is being so precise and he does just take that glorious spotlight and shine it on the sufficiency of Christ alone.

There's no way that we can merit salvation. There's nothing that, you know, as Owen would say, there's nothing that we bring to God for salvation except the sin we need to be saved from.

And Paul just lays out all these glorious arguments. So what would the

Christian life be missing if God did not include the book of Galatians and scripture for us?

I think it is just that what you've alluded to is the the emphasis upon Christ alone as the procuring efficient cause of our salvation, and then obviously closely coupled with that faith alone as the instrumental cause, the means by which the hand of the soul by which we receive the

Lord Jesus and become one with him and are knit together with him. I mean, that emphasis is in Paul's epistle to the

Romans. It certainly is. It's in Galatians. And I think because it is stated in a polemical form in Galatians, that is particularly insightful and helpful and something that perhaps we would therefore be lacking is

Paul really stresses the fact there that there is a human tendency, a tendency in each and every one of us to add to Christ.

I'm not sure you get that in too many other places in such a concentrated fashion in scripture, but it is so clear in Galatians.

That's the problem plaguing the churches in Galatia. No one was denying that Christ died on the cross.

No one's denying the doctrine of the Trinity. But what they are doing is adding to the

Lord Jesus. Every generation has done that in some form, some fashion.

We are still doing that today. It's our natural propensity to say, yes, the

Lord Jesus. And, and Paul just goes after that.

He is, he's exhaustive in pushing back and undermining any notion, any concept on our part that we bring anything to the table when it comes to salvation.

It is Christ alone, Christ alone, Christ alone. So I think that is the chief thing we would be missing is such a well presented, formulated, argued, polemical, if you like, epistle dedicated to this particular subject that with which the church has wrestled repeatedly throughout its history.

That's what I was going to say. If you look throughout church history, you're going to see this happen again and again and again.

And one of the concerns that I have for our current generation and even generation of believers in churches, there is such an ignorance of church history that we think the battles we're fighting today have never been fought before.

But Galatians proves that's not the case. The battles that we fight, the battle of Christ plus, that is a battle that has been fought from the first century.

So, and I think that that relays, that conveys to us just how important this book is, the book of Galatians.

And so pray for us this, you know, over the next couple of coming months as we work on this study, you've already written, your work's pretty much done now.

So. Amen to that. Workbook is in hand. The studies are filmed.

And so now comes all the fun of, you know, post -production processing and all of those things.

So you'd be praying for us in that, but how can we be praying for you personally, ministerial here at the church or anything that you have going on?

Yeah, you can be praying for us here at Fairview Covenant Church. This is a revitalization that a group of us took on more or less a year ago.

The church has a good history and an encouraging history going all the way back to the 60s when it was a little mission, but fell on some hard times over the past decade or two and thankful for those saints who continued faithfully here and those who labored in the word and among God's people.

But being able to come alongside the few members a year ago, a group of us, and to see what the

Lord has done, is doing, not without its challenges, certainly not without its struggles, any church work in general, that's par for the course, revitalization in particular, but be praying that the

Lord would bless his word, that it would go forth and truly there we would perform a work as we seek to grow in the grace and knowledge of the

Lord Jesus. Ministry -wise, I continue to work on the Puritans every moment

I get and especially trying to bring the voice of the

Puritans up into the present and enjoy it. I've benefited from it.

I want to continue to serve God's people in that fashion. So just as I have my hands in different projects that the

Lord would give wisdom and facilitate all that. The three -volume, which was that? Five volumes on John Cotton.

So John Cotton, what we would call, I mean they call him an American Puritan, but he served, this is interesting, he served in a church in Boston in England, and then he served in the first church in Boston in New England, and he was about 20 -25 years in each.

And so an interesting figure because he had, you know, one foot on either side of the Atlantic, English Puritanism, American Puritanism, and his works, five volumes, are fascinating.

Yes, because of their experiential emphasis, but you also get into Congregationalism, some of his political theory and other interesting issues.

So that's a project that took about three years, is done now, and going to be published with Reformation Heritage Books.

And next up is Thomas Watson. That's going to be fantastic. So not only do we know how to pray for you, but also we know what to be looking for in the coming years.

So brother, again, I appreciate so much your time letting us come out to Granbury, which is a just beautiful and fascinating little tale.

A lot going for it. So it's great out here, and so we'll be praying for you and the church here. Thank you, appreciate it.