Steve Meister on the Doctrine of God (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. And I have Steve Meister here in this studio with me and he's used to hearing English beat. He's like, why do you play mirror in the bathroom for three thousand three hundred shows?

I have no idea, but I'm not breaking the law anymore. So now I have this canned music Steve. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. Hey brother, it's good to be here. Steve doesn't know I have this new special road Podcaster pro to just helps with all kind of music and stuff just kind of fun.

Well, how would you describe that music? I Don't know is that like a Rave, it's not my thing. I don't know. I know I thought what am I gonna use for the show? I wanted to use New Orders ceremony.

But I couldn't get the licensing for it. It would have been great if you got social distortions. I was wrong.

We Have some background that's similar and it might not have been the same era. But what was your fast fascination with punk rock or what is your fast fascination. Because I'm fascinated by it. So are you some songs we can't listen to but as pastors we still can enjoy some of that.

Yeah rebellion.

What is it? Yeah. Well, you know if you understand the rebellion or the Impulse behind it. I think you can see the image of God reflected in the desire.

I just want to see how he's gonna try to redeem this. Possible is Steve has a straight face too. And he was explaining to me. It was a straight face.

You see the image of God and the desire for honesty. Okay. All right. See I shouldn't have interrupted and and the impulse behind That and that was one of I mean the music's awesome and so I've loved it played it was involved in the scene quite a bit.

Would have been more in the early mid 90s that's my era, but that desire for honesty and that's also what really attracted me, of course to reform theology and the the Desire to say what scripture says regardless of who it upsets or how it may initially make you feel.

We're gonna tell the truth and That's kind of the the impulse. I still appreciate. Well, this is already wonderful radio.

See if I was listening on the a .m. Dial, I wouldn't be changing the channel. So we have to do this. This kind of it's it's not just Bible teaching, right? It's not. This verse means such and such. It's no compromise radio with.

Sacramento's own Steve Meister. You didn't grow up in Sacramento though. Did you know grew up in California though on the Central Coast, Monterey County? All right, what city?

Outside Salinas. All right. Now you're pastoring in Sacramento at Emanuel Baptist Church. What do you. What do you call yourself? I know you don't call yourself executive lead pastor or something.

You have a team kind of how does that work? Yes, so myself my fellow pastor Robert Briggs. We are the two vocational pastors out of our eldership. And so we're the poor you sometimes you might describe by our function the preaching pastors.

So we do the the bulk of the preaching and teaching. We have other elders that serve in Wonderful capacities and shepherding the church as well, but we prefer just to use the title pastor. It's what the Bible says.

And think it helpfully. Demonstrates our unanimity and our equity as elders. Although what's interesting is a lot of the The functions of in the New Testament are a lot of the scriptures of descriptors of leaders in the New Testament are participles.

So the described function and the reason you have Overseer elder and pastor three titles for the same office in the New Testament because the New Testament is not really Could the Bible's not really concerned about Officiousness and titles but more about function and leadership.

So that's how we like to have the same approach.

Well, I never use those. I just call myself bishop all the time because I think it's a biblical episcopal a piss epi, you know. Upon scope. I just think just I like the sound of it better and it's all about how I get respect.

Well, I say there, you know, call me pastor or the most right reverend.

So Steve you don't know about my soundboard do you. You don't listen anymore. You think you probably listen to a few shows. These little buttons here I can program and Make them say things like this. And just like in the middle of everything I can just go.

I was just explaining I see dead people to my kids the other day because I have a shirt that says I read dead people. And they didn't they didn't they didn't get it. I Have a few others.

Remember when Charlton Heston was in jail. And the Planet of the Apes and they're spraying him down. Yeah, what do you say? So anyway, you're pastoring in Sacramento and you've Been involved with a lot of ministries in the past.

Tell me about the one ministry that I think of often I should pray for more Bible translators. I don't know the technical name for them. Well, what's going on there with that ministry?

I think it's important for our listeners to know about. Yeah, absolutely love to Bible Translation Fellowship. Yeah, that's it. Yep, and that's the website as well Bible Translation Fellowship org. I'm even privileged to serve on the board and my good friend Kyle's the founder and he is currently in South Africa establishing The base and we'll be there.

They were sent out missionaries from our church and the the overarching goal of BTF Bible Translation Fellowship is to see Bible Translation recovered and reintegrated as part of the mission of the church and That fidelity to Bible Translation would be something that Christians would care about again.

Which if there's a lot there in that whole field that needs to be reformed recovered and relooked at some old Preconceptions need to be undone and there's a ton of resources on the BTF website as well videos Kyle has done and other things that help Christians think through it.

It can get kind of technical and it's not something Christians think through all the time but so vitally important considering just how few Bible translations there are in the world compared to the number of the world's languages and how many of Bible translations for the that we have for the majority languages of the world that are in desperate need of revision.

Well Steve, you know in in our particular culture outside of Sri Lanka, we don't have Lambs, we don't know about those but lots of times there are sacrificial Things that happen like for aardvarks and stuff.

So what we'd like to do with our Bible translations is if we see the word for lamb. We just put aardvark in because the culture here outside of Sri Lanka. They would get that behold the aardvark of God.

And so that's kind of what we're after around here. Any thoughts on that? Behold the aardvark that takes away the center.

I go for something early in the alphabet, right? Right. Well, I mean we joke about that but things like that happen oh, I know even worse. And When you and this really gets to even when we talk about things theologically here when you divorce scripture from the theological unity of the scripture and the understanding of the church you end up with Those kinds of weird decisions because how the Bible is being conceived is as an individual book for individuals to read in isolation.

Whereas what we see in scripture itself and in the history of the church God has never given his word apart from the community that would inform and understand and preach his word. And so when you have things like that, well, what do you do about you know?

Lamb, and there's a you know, there's a culture that has no concept of it. Well, you teach and you preach that God's. It's it's baked in to the mission of the church and God's design that that the Bible goes forth with preachers and evangelists and teachers.

And pastors who will expound and explain. And maybe in when necessary put footnotes in you can give explanatory annotations like we have in the history of our English translations. But conceiving conceiving of the task of translating the scripture as though you're writing a book to be read by an individual in Isolation and then there to have complete comprehension by themselves is just missing the whole foundation of biblical mission.

Steve that's why we're having you on the show. Excellent answer. And I think if you remember back in your Christian life probably still happens today. It still happens to me now. When we would pick up little books called manners and customs of the Bible and you'd think oh Now that I understand that custom that they had 3 ,000 years ago.

I better understand the text. I'm the one that needs to be informed. I'm not trying to change what the text says the text says what it text the text says. And so I Have great joy in learning about manners and customs so that I can orient myself.

To what the Bible says instead of the other way around. Right. Exactly. And. And the Bible was meant to be preached. It was meant to be taught and that's explicit in the Bible itself. And so any Evangelistic missionary Bible translation endeavor that is discounting that is off at step one.

Steve is here in New England for the first time. I'm gave him a little tour of Central, Massachusetts today. We have a lot of Dirt and sticks and it's kind of a not doesn't look very nice here, but you're here to do a conference on Marriage and parenting and we have you know, probably 4 ,000 people signed up.

We'll be at the civic auditorium. 50 bucks a shot. I told Steve I've given five bucks of everybody that showed up.

So I see any green M &Ms in the green room. I'm leaving. This is the green room, by the way.

What you see is what you get. There's a life cycle and like a little desk. Oh and you don't know about this. Do you this is one of those things that you don't know about that. You're gonna wish you had My my listeners know but Steve doesn't listen anymore because he's new.

Too much of a big shot. So I want you to know that I'm gonna just give you a daily affirmation. So because it's important.

I declare you are calm and peaceful. You will not let people or circumstances upset you. You will rise above every difficulty. Knowing that God has given you the power to remain calm.

I declare that you that's affirmation 22 and I want you to know that this is rechargeable and I have never recharged it.

With my little 5-volt. I'm more agitated now, so I don't think it worked.

The Doctrine of God as the Fount of All Joy

So instead of this let's focus on you. You're here to do a conference on The doctrine of God and I think you've entitled it. Well the fount of all joy. Tell us a little. Kind of give us a little intro or a little survey or overview of what you plan to do this weekend.

One in in a manner of speaking. It's pretty simple the goal that we have and aren't the sessions that that I'll be teaching is to For Christians to be assured and to be able to count for the fact that God loves them and he created them to be Happy and has redeemed them in Christ to be happy in the only source of true happiness, which is God himself.

God is blessed and we account for God's blessedness the fullness of joy out of which he has created and redeemed the fullness of joy and of the What John Owen says the ineffable mutual in being of the Father and the Son and the internal love of his spirit That has overflowed and creation and redemption.

So we account for that with what we call the attributes of God. And so we'll walk through some of the absolute attributes that often get forgotten by Christians and get mistaken even by theologians and God's aseity his divine simplicity his incomprehensibility and we'll walk through how that accounts for and gives us assurance in our Joy now and our hope for joy eternal in the presence of God in Christ.

Awesome. I can't wait.

I think I said in social media besides getting you to sign my 1689 London Baptist Confession. I'm gonna be in the front row. Joking aside Steve tell our listeners Why what you just said is different than Piper's Christian hedonism?

Because I hear words about joy and love and you know enjoying God and things like that. How if people think oh, yeah, that's Christian hedonism is it well.

I think the basis of if I'm not mistaken the basis of it would be different in that we are accounting for God's love and joy as absolute perfections of the divine being and not emotions and passions that are the same as what men have and what creatures experience.

And so that the big issue of God's immutability and his Impassibility is which where we'll end the conference and understanding and in many ways Impassibility and God's blessedness or are asserting the same truth from different angles that God is the fullness of joy.

It's been said that you know rocks are impassable and God is impassable. But they are so for two very polar opposite reasons. God is impassable because he is the fullness of joy himself it's impossible for him to be any more or any less joyful and so I think the It is certainly true that God created us to find rest in him.

That's what you know as Augustine said and that's certainly a truth. We want to affirm but we want to get away from any conception that the emotional Life of God it well that God has an emotional life like we would understand it like creatures.

Divine Immutability and Impassibility

Talking to Steve Meister today on no compromise radio ministry. Steve just big picture for those that are kind of just diving into words like Impassible and does God have passions or does he not? Can you just help the readers.

Just big picture? They go to their Bible and they see that I'm the Lord your God. I do not change and they read that and then they Read. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit or something about God's emotions are written down.

What's the way Christians should read?

Those passages. Well, I think most basically we always want to read any part of the Bible in the context of the whole Bible and God expects Us to do that. So you have passages like Genesis 6 6, you know where it says that the Lord Regretted that he made man in view of man's wickedness and the wickedness of his heart.

But it'll say many other places in Scripture that God's not a man that he repents or he regrets and so God Expects us to figure that out as it were and what we what we say is those statements that are about God.

Absolutely when God tells us who he is like notably which we'll spend some time on tomorrow Lord willing in Exodus 3 he is who he is. God says his name is I am who I am that that has a Governing if you will function in how we read the rest of Scripture.

We never forget what is absolutely true about God as we read the rest of what Scripture reveals about God. So when you come into passages of Scripture where There's a figure taken that's emotional like like the emotions of man.

We understand that just the way we do in Christians do it intuitively when we read passages like Psalm 18 or or first Samuel 2 there's no rock like the Lord. We understand that God's not made of granite.

He's not composite thing That but God is communicating what is truly his strength and provision and reliability and fidelity. So in the same way the the Lord takes on in revealing himself Emotional characteristics and accommodating to us because we understand what that's like so he's communicating to us in his word in that way and accommodating to our frame because we can't he is fundamentally Incomprehensible in himself and we can't grasp the infinite perfection of God as God acts according to it and all that he does.

What would the good answer? What would be the? Logical outcome of a God who changes in his passions. When I don't know are there seven billion people on earth and how many are Christians? And what about people that disobey and obey and grieving not grieving?

What does that do to God's I guess? Passions or nature if in fact he does change based on the creature.

Well one level of God would be in a constant emotional turmoil continually. At the more fundamental level though. You've effectively denied the existence of God entirely. John Owen said that to ascribe the least mutability to the divine essence is transcendent atheism in the highest degree that.

To ascribe any mutability to the divine essence any ability to change in God's being is to effectively Assert atheism because change is characteristic of creation and that means you're saying God is now a part of the Created being the created order and creation.

You have no creator and he is now locked as it were in the same issues we have Constant change and there is no Redeemer Savior Lord outside of the changing cosmos in which we are in.

It's always good to quote John Owen on no-compromise radio, thank you for that. You don't need any notes. Yeah, you're a sharp young man I appreciate that and can learn a lot from you. Was it R .C. Sproul or someone else who said?

The terminology about us as people. Describing ourselves as human beings is wrong because we're human. We're human becomers. But I think that was. Like, you know being is used of God that he just is right the same language to be, you know I am who I am kind of language and he just is he's a being and For us we become things.

Yeah, it's it's pretty much degenerating is what we're becoming.

So there's only one being and lots of becomers. Yeah, and even some ways and some theologians have said that. Even when we say God is a is is being we have to even qualify that because he's not a being the way we are.

Beings of pain we use the word and we always have to remember. God is a verb. When he when he took a name to Himself, it's a verb. Even though we use a noun to say God we have to always remember. We're talking about a verb the fullness of life.

Well, even that is is amazing. It reminded me of one man who said Can you talk? About the Trinity for more than three minutes without falling into a heresy and it's the same thing. Can you talk about God?

Right for more than three minutes without saying something and with that's why we have to have all these Qualifications and and try to say well we mean this and we don't mean that. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And we always have to remember when we hit that Ceiling of our finitude is when we stop to worship and that God is not a subject. We've put under a microscope that we can examine. He is the God of all creation and his incomprehensibility is the motive of our Adoration.

Great is the Lord and greatness greatly to be praised. His greatness is Unfathomable unsearchable Psalm 145. So it's our motive of worship. I love that. Talk to me a little bit more about the verb Noun verb.

I like that. So I just want to hear a little bit more about it. Well when when Moses asks When when God or Moses asked God who you know, who should I say sent me and I'm talking about Exodus 3. You know God said I am who I am I am and the God of your father's God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.

And the the name a proper to him what we call God's essential name Yahweh that comes from that ascription. I am who I am is God chose a verb. He describes himself as what we say in theology is pure being he's a most pure spirit.

God is Infinite and he is the fountain of all life. He is the Creator and it's in his light. We see light and that's such an important text for so many theologians in the past in Psalm 36 verses 9 and 10.

And so we understand that when we talk about God's. When we give negative descriptions of God, we call them negative because we're denying imperfections in him so immutability impassibility when we when we give those sometimes it is Wrongly taken or conceived by people as well.

You're saying God's static. He's a nerd. He's indifferent. He's apathetic or whatever. No, it's the exact opposite. We're saying God is so perfect. He is the fountain of existence and being and everything that exists is because of him and his divine power in creation and Sustaining grace, so it's impossible for him to Change and get better because he already is perfect.

It's impossible for him to become worse. And so it's just important to remember that God picked a verb to describe himself to us not a noun. We are named by nouns where men where humans were Americans, whatever God is named by a verb.

We're qualified by verbs because we're contingent upon The God who is but God is contingent on no one. He just is.

Classical Theism, Confessional Recovery, and Pastoral Comfort

Steve Meister today on no compromise radio ministry. Steve years ago I was preaching through Hebrews and then I got cancer and then it was a lot of assurance issues going through my mind and It's good examination of self and self-righteousness and all kinds of other things.

And so in that kind of theological It wasn't a crisis I would say but in I was looking for answers that there were there were problems. With my thinking or the thinking of others that were influencing me and I needed to work through that issue Biblically and that's what led me to the things that I talked about a lot when it comes to assurance law gospel Sanctification Christ Center preaching so the problem kind of helped fuel my study for other areas.

Yeah. Is that what happened with you too? Because I think I know the answer. Your study of classical theism and the doctrine of God came out of a problem. What was the problem?

Well, there was basically there was a lot of and we could go back to maybe that even the EFS controversy in 2016 that that that broke out but there were issues in our immediate circles related to how we understand what we confess and who we confess God to be in the second London Confession chapter 2 and it was obviously there were Discord and disagreement and it was something I was also back in 2018.

2017 to 2018 was going through my own personal health crisis and had time to read and I figured that if things were You know if there was disagreement and argument happening I should probably figure out what's going on.

And then once I did that I realized that a lot of what I had learned and what I had been taught and assumed was actually built on faulty foundation wasn't consistent with scripture and wasn't consistent with what Centuries of Christians have said about God for very good reasons going down through the ages and so that kind of led me along the line of pursuing confessional classical theism and it was also just honestly the the way my own soul soars at knowing who God is the way my own confidence grows and pastorally the benediction and blessing I've seen.

The knowledge of the true God give to people in struggling circumstance Christians dealing with depression very very difficult practical real issues just to know and contemplate and have assurance in the grandeur of God his immense pastoral benefits and does wonders for the Christians We need to.

It sounds kind of weird that we have to say it, but we need to talk about God more.

So we have conferences on God, right? Well occasionally on my youtube channel the Sacramento Church called Emmanuel Baptist will pop up and it'll be you preaching and I will click on it and watch and I Get to hear you talk about the greatness of God and you know what?

I see smiles come out of you to the Reformed Baptist actually smiles with that. Uh-huh. Occasionally because only on the words. Because we have such good news as we have said in the past. That's why we need to send a missionary to our faces as we talk about who God is and the fount of all joy and.

God is happy. So we should be happy. And even he commands our he commands our worship for us to be happy. Worship is a grace. We're not giving anything to God. We're receiving from him even as we offer praise to him.

I am thinking now about the passage in I think it's first Timothy chapter.

Six and then we'll wrap up the show. I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus who is Excuse me who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession To keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ Which he will display at the proper time He who is the blessed and only sovereign King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

He is the blessed. Amen. All right, Steve, thanks for being in the studio today. I'm trying to think of anything else that we can talk about. It is Website. I be something. What's your website for the church?

I BC sack org. All right, and you can pull up sermons by you. And who's the Scottish guy Bob Robert? Does he go by Robert of Bob Robert. Robert? All right, so Bob if you're listening. Well, yeah, I love the team that you guys have there in terms of I'm Pastors who preach or whatever.

I don't know the technical details. And tell us about. I think you have a conference coming up every August. Might be September September. Even in Hamilton has been there. Other folks have been there.

Who do you have this year?

Come yeah, Sacramento Gospel Conference. This year is September 15 and 16 and we're having Dr. Jim Renahan and Joe Thorne and we look at the glory of Christ in his church. Okay. Do you know right down the street over there?

15 minutes is where Jim Renahan Pastored before he went to West Cal Baptist wing at one of us. Yeah, and I don't know if you know the story, but I was renting a car a Truck and the guy was being super rude.

I just had moved here. It was 97 and I was about ready to blow my top and I thought I probably should be nice and not really be mean back to this guy because Jim because Somebody might see me and two people behind me was Jim Renahan and when I walked away He said are you Mike Avendroth who just moved to town to be the pastor?

No, I praise the Lord instead of blowing up. I didn't and I was thankful that at least for a moment. I acted godly in front of Jim Renahan good work. Well, my name is Mike Avendroth. This is no compromise radio.

You can write us info at no compromise radio .com. We'll talk to Steve another time. You can pull up the website to Bethlehem Bible Church to get the messages that Steve has preached here at the fount of all joy conference.