The Driving Line 12/10/2022

Greetings and welcome to The Driving Line. James White. We polled an audible this morning. Or called an audible, not polled an audible. Called an audible this morning. The plan, including the end of this morning, was that I would be polling out from Lubbock, where I had a wonderful time last night.

Colin Lundstrom. Pretty well known on Twitter, Colin. Was at his church and had a wonderful time last night. Good group of folks here. But two brothers from Kansas. Drove all the way down from Kansas.

My goodness. I always feel badly when people do things like that. Just to hear me speak. But they seemed to enjoy themselves. Anyway, so I was in Lubbock. And the plan was to get together with an old friend from, man, back in the 90s.

This guy was involved in having me in to speak in Albuquerque. So we were going to have some nice olive garden this evening. And I was looking forward to that. Then technology came to, well, my rescue, really, honestly, in this situation, I think.

Twitter is becoming a better and better source of news. Really is, since Elon Musk took over and canned all of the leftist wackos who were running the place. Into the ground, really, but they were running the place anyways.

And a graphic shows up on my screen for a winter storm in northern Arizona. When I booked this trip, I was looking at Lubbock and, well, I can come back two different ways. I can go south, or I can go north.

It's about equidistant. Probably a little less climbing going south, but maybe a little longer distance. So it's sort of a, you know, six one half and does the other situation. And I decided to go north.

And that's what I had booked and stuff. Well, here's a graphic with 40 mile per hour winds. Now, you might go, well, that's not that bad. But if you're driving into it, and let's say you're doing only 60 miles per hour and you've got a 40 mile per hour headwind, that's a 100 mile per hour wind.

And let that shift all of a sudden, or the road turns, or you go through a road cutout and it swirls the other direction. Yeah, that's not a whole lot of fun in an RV at all. Or pulling an RV, in my case.

As well as the possibility of snow. The second night when I was supposed to be staying in Holbrook. And I'm like, snow and wind, yeah. So I quickly made travel plan changes and I'm taking the southern route home.

I actually, that means I get home a day earlier, but that means two days of long drives instead of three days of medium drives. Is what that is. So today is a long day, so a prayer is appreciated. Like I said, both Emory and Lubbock did, well, I guess you could call it the same presentation.

It was the same subject. And pretty much the same time frame, too. But it was interesting to see how differently things turned out when the only presentation I was using is just graphics of manuscripts.

So everything else is just however I want to handle it. And it's interesting how that changes from presentation to presentation. But like I said, great folks. And that's what I love about doing this. And again, so thankful to all of you who make it possible.

Including the folks at church last night who were very generous in expressing their support of what we're doing. And that is you get to sit down with pastors over normally nice chips and salsa. And I have to admit, I'm noticing that when I do this, I'm normally the oldest guy at the table these days.

But what that does is it does allow me to, you know, share from really a lifetime of ministry now. But with guys I normally wouldn't have a chance to do that with if all you did was the big circuit. You know, where you're basically having your dinners with the same people all the time.

You know, the plenary speakers and stuff. And now you get to be with regular pastors at little Mexican restaurants and stuff like that, which is really cool. I really, really enjoy it. And, you know, I had a guy say last night and started to choke up a little bit when he did.

He said, I just have to tell you, you've just been a mentor for me for seven years. And it just meant so much to me. And yes, I hear that all the time. But no, it doesn't get old. And it is a reason for giving thanks and truly being thankful, you know, going back a long, long ways.

We had to be, you know, coming up next year, 40 years, Alpha and Omega Ministries. There were a number of those early years, really first decade and a half, honestly. We were poor as church mice. And nobody knew who we were.

And there are a lot of ministries that start and die at that time. You know what I mean? They start and die. Because the support's not there or the focus isn't there or whatever. And I'm not anybody special.

The Lord just wanted to do something through us and so kept us going through the real difficult times and challenges. And when I hear someone saying, you know, in the past seven years, well, there was, you know, 32 years before that.

And that's true. But the reason we had the opportunity of doing what we did there is that we were faithful in those previous 32 years. And that the Lord was gracious to us to keep us faithful. Let's make sure we put that the right direction, those 32 years earlier.

So, again, my sincere thanks to everybody who makes it possible for us to, you know, I pull into, I was at a gas, just now got lunch at a gas station. Yeah, I'll tell you, I can name names of people that I know on the quote-unquote speaking circuit wouldn't be eating the cheeseburger I just ate.

But I did watch the guy make it, so it was fresh. It just took forever. Anyway, when I pull in there and make sure to grab the right colored handle. Remember, folks, I never owned a diesel until this vehicle.

And so I'm a little nervous because the last thing you ever want to do is accidentally put regular gas in a diesel. That is one really expensive mistake. And so I have the ritual of matching the color of the cap to the, at least to the dispenser and normally to the hose as well.

The nozzle and the hose, which are green. Just to make sure we're going the right direction. Because, oh, I would absolutely, well, I would die of embarrassment and utter foolishness if I did something like that.

But anyways, so, you know, when I go in there, that diesel costs more than regular gas does. And that's how we get to go the places we're going. And I did get some real compliments on the truck last night.

In fact, a guy came in and one of the, I think he was one of the elders. And he said, hey, my Tundra is parked on the other side of your truck, he said, and my Tundra is very intimidated. I said, yeah, Rich and I have had that conversation when I park at the office, too.

This truck is very intimidating. There's no two ways about it. It doesn't look that way from a distance. But, man, alive, you walk up and you realize it's towering over you. And it's like, okay, all righty then.

So, anyway, all of that, again, to say thank you to everybody that makes all of this possible. I was listening to, well, I'm going to get to that one in a second. Something absolutely stunning happened in my state of Arizona.

Well, a lot of stunning things are happening in my state of Arizona. We used to just be a, you know, quiet little conservative corner of the country, you know. People with cowboy hats and cowboy boots and carrying a .45.

And we're not anymore, thanks to all the Californians that moved in. And you can't carry the .45 anymore because they'll freak out and call the cops. So, anyway, all the stuff in Maricopa County, that's one thing.

But I'm talking about Kyrsten Sinema. One of our two senators has announced that she is not going to caucus with the Democrats anymore. She has registered as an independent. Now, I told Rich, I'm going to go ahead and confess to everybody.

When I thought of this, one of the first thoughts I had across my mind was, have I ever prayed that God would change her heart? I've prayed that God would protect us from her perspectives, which are really out there and ungodly and things like that, yes.

But have I ever prayed that God would change her heart? And I couldn't remember if I ever, I couldn't, I didn't think I ever had. And so I had to confess that sin. Because God can save anybody, and he can save Kyrsten Sinema too.

She is an odd one. I'm going to tell you, when I saw her walk up and place that vote in the Senate chambers and then curtsy and scamper off, I was just like, man, this is not the Arizona of Barry Goldwater anymore, you know what I mean?

No, not at all. And so I don't know what all this means. Rich mentioned, hey, there are people talking about, if you get, you know, Joe Manchin sort of betrayed his own principles in voting with Biden on that one boondoggle that has caused more and more inflation.

The anti-inflation thing that caused so much more inflation. And he hasn't gotten anything that he was promised for that. So, hey, if you can get Manchin and Sinema to caucus with the Republicans, you could become a majority.

And voila. Stranger things have happened. They really have. Of course, then probably someone like Romney would go the other direction just to make sure it wouldn't happen. Man, what a mess he is. Can you believe he was a presidential candidate?

Came close? Only, what, 10 years ago? Yeah, 10 years ago. That's astonishing. But anyway, so, yeah, I'm definitely, Lord, work on that woman's heart. What a trophy of grace that would be. So I hope and pray something like that happens.

But good old Arizona adding to the craziness in our day. For all of you, I have to admit I'm chuckling to see how many people are following the World Cup right now. Because I'm used to being overseas.

And overseas, this is like a religion. You've got the World Cup of Soccer. If it's anything like rugby, those are just so huge and massive outside the United States. But I don't remember ever having this level of interest in what we call soccer, what the rest of the world calls football.

From people, I've got friends in St. Charles. They're texting me the scores. They're going to have penalty kicks and stuff like that. So I guess last night, Lionel Messi scored and then also had a penalty kick.

And Argentina just snuck by the Netherlands. Oh, goodness. I just lost my garment. Well, okay, it fell off the windshield. That's not good at all. Given that I'm trying to get directions with it. Anyway, that's troubling.

I'm climbing a hill right now, so I have to find a way to get this thing back up here. I knew that would happen. I hate these suction cup mounts. They will never, ever, ever stay up there. It's just dumb to do it that way.

It really is. All right, I found a way to put it back where I can see it anyways. So what is a casino doing in the middle of a mountain? I don't know. I'm in New Mexico. What do you expect? There's weird stuff out here.

What was I talking about? Oh, Lionel Messi. Argentina gets past the Netherlands. And I'm just like, all right, I follow enough of it to know that Lionel Messi has a really strong claim to be the GOAT.

Even with Pelé and stuff like that. Messi is just amazing. But I don't think he's ever won the World Cup. I'm sure he's won lots of other things in other leagues. So I'm going to say right now, I'm pulling for Argentina.

I'd like to see Lionel Messi get his World Cup. So I'll just mention that for everybody who is finding themselves being fans of a sport that, you know, for Americans, super low-scoring sports are not our thing.

For a lot of people, it's about as exciting as curling. But it's going on right now, so yay Argentina, go whatever. So this morning, you know, people have asked, you know, you've got these hours driving, you know, today's at least six hours in a truck, a little bit more.

What do you do? And I'm listening to two books right now. I'm listening to Michael Brown's Silencing of the Lambs. I'm enjoying that a lot. It's from last year, but I'm just now getting to it. And I'm re-listening to a fictional work on the coming forth of Handel's Messiah.

It seems appropriate this time of year. I listened to it a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Learned a lot from it, but it's also a fiction. It's historical fiction, so it's just a good book, and I'm going back and forth between the two of them at the moment.

But I also wanted to spend some time in the Psalms, and so I had downloaded this app, a Bible app. I mean, there are so many of them. And it has the ability to read the ESV to me, and I haven't had to pay anything, or at least I don't think I did.

I don't know. I suppose I should check my subscriptions, huh? Yeah, you'll find out next year. You were paying for it, and richly at that. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened, and I wouldn't be the only one that has happened too.

But anyway, so I started, I think, in Psalm 68. There was some stuff in there to consider and think about that I was thinking about sharing. But then I got to Psalm 69, and there is the confession on the part of the psalmist.

And again, I have to go simply by recollection of what I heard this morning because, A, I'm driving up a mountain. B, I'm passing a wide load. C, I'm following a small vehicle that is afraid to pass the wide load, and therefore I am not looking at my phone or anything like that, and I'm not 1 ,000 certain that if I scrolled out of the recording app that I would actually be able to continue recording anyway.

So put all that together. I'm going by memory. And it's, Lord, you know my faults very well. They're all before you. It's a confession on the psalmist's part that his sins and transgressions and errors are well known to God.

He can't hide anything from God. And we all say that, but then we don't necessarily live in light of that. I know that we develop this mindset where we, in essence, we know God knows. We know God knows, sure.

But do we then live in light of that, or do we find a way to excuse our sin in such a fashion that, you know, God's attentions are someplace else or something like that? They're really not. But the psalmist confesses.

He's a sinner. But then it was the next two verses. So I think that was verse 5. So I think it's verses 6 and 7 of Psalm 69 that I just groaned, audibly groaned when I heard these verses. Having confessed his faults and errors, the psalmist then says, may not those who are following you be, what was it, ashamed or I forget what the exact language was, but it was basically, please don't let my failures and my inconsistencies and my sins cause others to stumble, especially those that are following you.

And, I mean, there is the background to James's, let not many of you be teachers, greater condemnation. If you're the one out front, then you know what happens. I mean, we could start down the list of names.

And I know for me, when I'm confessing my sin, I, as R .C. Sproul said long ago, every time we sin, we are in essence confessing that we love ourselves more than we love God, more than we love Christ.

We are saying, oh yeah, I know, wow, I just went over a pass at 7 ,600 feet above sea level. I did not realize I had been climbing all that much, but I'm at 7 ,600 feet. When we do these things, when we act in this way, especially when you have so much light, when you have so much knowledge of what God's will is, what does that say about how our love is anywhere near, nowhere near being perfected and how much we still love our own lusts and our own desires and, you know, sin is insanity when you think about it.

It's so short-sighted. If we really, if we have the light of eternity, then how can we not recognize the utter foolishness of rebellion and sin? That brief pleasure, that, you're just not even, it's insanity.

It really, really is insanity. When we treasure secret sins, it causes Christian schizophrenia where you end up with two different lives and they don't make sense as they're related to one another. So when you think of it that way, then you think of the impact of sin, and that's where the finishing well concept is very much at the forefront of my thinking.

Okay, I'm not ready to croak. You know, I could in a second, you know, going down a steep hill. I realize that all of us need to recognize we do not have the promise of tomorrow. And I could crash. My heart could explode.

There's all sorts of things that can happen, that have happened when the Lord says it's time to come home. So I'm not, you know, thinking that just because my birthday is this weekend that it's all over, but I am in that age range now where I think back on a lot of men who did not finish well.

And it's men and women. I'm just talking generically there. A lot of believers did not finish well. And I don't want to be amongst them. And I'm not talking about where, you know, people get angry about somebody in a certain theological position or something that's not definitional of the faith.

I'm talking about either full-on apostasy or obvious rank sin. You know, in most recent years, I'm not talking about people who have, like I said, made that kind of thing, but, okay, Ravi Zacharias. You could not say that Ravi Zacharias ended well at all.

And so anybody who thinks that they are above or beyond that is a foolish person and is probably in danger of not finishing well. Do I have confidence in Christ's ability to finish the work that he's begun in me?

Of course. But do I know my own heart? Yes. And so, you know, my prayer is I want to finish well. And here's the psalmist saying, Lord, I know my follies. I know my sins. I know my weaknesses. And please don't let me be the reason why someone else stumbles and falls when they look at me, they see me, and I do these foolish things.

And I say that as an older man now, but we all know that those principles are very similar to what parents are praying all the time because you know your children are watching you. And you know that they see so much more than they let on.

And then years and years and years later, you're talking with them once you get to my age, and you find out just how much of an influence you had upon them positively and negatively. And you can't go back and fix that stuff.

So as parents, we definitely understand, please, as my children are seeking to follow you, as my grandchildren or great-grandchildren are seeking to follow you, don't let my foolish actions cause them to be ashamed.

That's what's being expressed there. And as I think about that, that is definitely a prayer that we need to have for ourselves and to pray for one another as well. It's important. So one last shifting gears here, both in reality as well as metaphorically, since I'm going down the hill I was climbing before, and I do have my engine brake turned on.

I have both an engine brake and an exhaust brake, so the exhaust brake's much louder. That's the one you hear real well, but the engine brake does work real well on a diesel. It's amazing. Well, some of you are sitting there going, Amazing?

What do you mean? It's new to me. It's my first diesel, man. And by the way, the ding, ding, ding, that's the Garmin that fell off the windshield just a few moments ago, telling me about, I don't know, oh, change in speed limit.

That is nice. That is a nice feature, I will admit. That is a nice feature. I may have to find a different place to mount this thing because I knew that was going to happen. It stayed up there, what, since, like, what, July?

So I got, what, five months? Well, I guess that's not too bad. I'm not sure if the mount broke or something. I can't see the mount. It came off. Anyway, it's that time of year again, and I have always been a huge fan of Advent celebration.

Some of my greatest and most positive memories of my youth are associated with Christmas, and I know there are some who have compunctions against the celebration of Christmas, and I'm not going to get into that right now.

I did retweet, by the way, and I almost, I didn't have time to, but I could probably still find it fairly easily. I was going to pull down the audio file. I forget who was it posted it, but it's the Sunday school lesson I did at PRBC, I don't know, six, seven years ago maybe?

I didn't look to see, but I did a study on the origins of Christmas that's very, very different than what you'll get on Wikipedia or YouTube or some weirdness like that, and it talks about things like the date of the birth of Christ in relationship to when John the Baptist was conceived in light of when Zechariah would be serving in the temple and stuff from Roger Beckwith on that, as well as some of the stuff about, you know, who borrowed from whom in regards to the date, things like that.

And so, you know, a lot of people found it really interesting, so I would recommend that to you if you do have an interest in those things or if you are one of the folks that, you know, really struggle this time of year with religious freedom issues.

But for those who do celebrate the season and want to celebrate the Incarnation, I hope as parents that you will really emphasize that the giving of gifts and the expectation of the receiving of gifts, these really need to be tied in very closely to both the expectation, which is in a lot of Christmas hymns, but the expectation of the coming of the Messiah and then the fulfillment of that coming in the birth of Christ and make the connection to what is coming in only a matter of weeks with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as well.

So in other words, I think one of the greatest gifts you can give to your kids and to your grandkids would be to go through some of the key texts. Go through Isaiah 9, Isaiah 7. Go through Malachi. Talk about Bethlehem and stuff like that.

But show them the fulfillment aspects and remind them these things were written hundreds of years before Christ came. And they're written by all sorts of different people in all sorts of different contexts.

And here they have their fulfillment in the coming of Christ. It's a beautiful thing, and it's the most beautiful thing of the season. And all the gifts that we give, remind them that the majority of the stuff they got last year doesn't mean a lot to them today.

There may be one or two things that really had special meaning, but the majority of it doesn't really have a lot of meaning to them now. So you want to get things that have deep and abiding meaning all year long and every Christmas.

And recognizing the supernatural nature of the prophecies of the coming of the Messiah, learning those texts and loving those things, that's something that never gets old. That's something that will be theirs forever.

That's something you can give to them. So some suggestion there along those lines. All right, well, thanks for listening to the driving line. I got up and down the hill without crashing during all of that.

That's a good thing. Hopefully it was useful to you. And next week, Lord Welland will be back in the studio for the regular dividing line until February when we will be back on the road heading back toward Tennessee and Louisiana in our February road trip, which will include a debate along the way.

So we'll be telling you more about that as it comes along. Thanks for listening. God bless.